The problem is we are only paying for half the lifecycle of the product. Start charging disposal fees to companies for every plastic/non-recycleable bit, and your head will spin at how fast they can get us 90-100% repairable, recyclable, and re-useable products.
I think the author's are being cautious about calling out someone's appearance. It can be hard to determine if a plastic surgery did happen, and if it was purely cosmetic.
Like if you look at her now, she clearly has a difference nose (more noticeable in more recent photos), but writing "Kristi had a nose job to look more like Ivanka" lands the wrong way if you can't prove that she actually had a nose job, and that it was for that reason. Imagine how bad your ass would get sued if she actually had a cyst or melanoma on her nose, and had to have it removed and then get reconstructive surgery?
Let's not trivialize slavery by saying that everyone else was doing it.
As far as the deeper cuts go, it was about overt racism as well. Slavery in the US was justified by saying that the slaves were less than people (or even human) because they weren't white. Slavery may have been abolished, but that justification is still strong if you go to the wrong parts of the US today.
We are talking about Starlink here, correct? Owned by Elon
No, we are talking about how hard of a target a satellite based network is vs a terrestrial fiber network. Starlink is being used purely as an example here, but is by no means a complete representation of all aspects of the technology.
That said, all satellite networks are subject to dying if their ground-stations are taken offline...
Yes, but they can route traffic between satellites and back down to working ground stations. Theoretically, one working ground station could keep the satellite network connected to the entire Internet. Hence why Starlink still works over Ukraine, and why it is such a big deal when Elon shuts it off.
If you're hurtling towards disaster, shouldn't you try the brakes even if you think they aren't going to work? We can't move the United States to the left as long as far right authoritarians are being voted into office. Once some stability is established, we can start working towards more progressive policies. If given the chance between voting for the right and voting for the centrist, I'm going to pick the centrist every time. The only alternative is violence, which is a last resort in my mind (and we're getting awfully fucking close).
All my food comes in plastic. My potatoes come in plastic bags. My lettuce has a plastic label and twist-tie on it. My shredded wheat cereal is in plastic. Even my eggs, which are in cardboard cartons, are put in disposable plastic bins for shipments. As a consumer in my area, the only choice I have that isn't plastic, is nothing. Consumers cannot make this change. The only people in the market who can change it are the suppliers who decided to put everything in plastic to begin with. This not something we can consume our way out of. It takes either personal accountability on the part of the suppliers, or it takes a government mandate.
To put into scale how wrong you are about taking out a satellite, the last satellite the US shot down was in 2008, and it took a specially modified 9 million dollar missile to shoot it down. A Starlink satellite with launch costs included is just under 2 million dollars. Not only is it technologically difficult to take out a satellite, but it's much more costly to shoot them down than it is to put them up.
It's not a trivial thing to take out a single satellite, let alone a whole constellation of satellites.
You literally could not be more wrong about this.
...Russia bombed their power plants, all the cabling, and it was a literal war zone.
Here you are acknowledge that ground-based systems are very vulnerable to attack. Guess what still works in Ukraine right now (or at least when Elon allows it to work). You got it. Starlink.
How about another comparison. Starlink has a full project estimated cost of ~10 billion dollars, that's with launches and satellites. The estimated cost to rebuild Ukraine's telecom network is 4.7 billion dollars, and that is just for the damaged infrastructure in Ukraine. Starlink has already generated 72 million in profit (not revenue, but profit!)
We gave telecom providers 200 billion in tax breaks to build a fiber network in the US, and they didn't even finish the job. 20x what Starlink's estimated cost is.
Serioualy, the scale of how wrong you are about all of this is staggering.
The other thing we should learn is that primaries matter. Primaries are where you vote for the person you want, general elections are where you vote against the one you don't.
Are satellite links easier to take down than a fiber link? No. It takes specialized weapons manfactured by state level actors to take out a a single satellite, let alone a whole constellation. I can take a pair of wire clippers, and take out every cable link in my neighborhood in a afternoon. Russia fairly regularly sabotages undersea cables just by "accidentally" dragging an anchor over them.
Is Starlink funded partially by public money? Absolutely yes, along with every other telecom provider. Hell, we gave them the public TV bands as compensation for builfijg a public fiber network (which they never even fucking did!)
Do Starlink satellite need to be replaced at extreme cost? Yes, but so does terresrrial network infrastructure. There is a reason why your internet isn't 12kbps anymore... As far as the cost goes, the consumers determine if the cost is worth the benefit, and so far the answer is 'yes'.
Ever wonder why Ukraine was using Starlink for network connections in the first place? Maybe it's becuse the vulnerable terrestrial based networks were damaged or taken out of service months ago, and you can't exactly get a contractor to go into a warzone and lay down new cables.
Your points, that satellites based networks are more vulnerable and prohibitively expensive is simply not compatible with reality.
It is simply harder to sabotage if the wires are underground and cannot be readily seen by hostile actors.
This statement is not correct. It is the topic being discussed. Fiber network are more vulnerable than satellite networks. It takes specialized weapons to take out a single satellite link. Any idiot with wire clippers can take out a fiber link, and it happens all the time. Fiber networks are more difficult to replace at scale than a satellite network, and individuals links are more important to fiber network than they are to satellite networks.
The problem is we are only paying for half the lifecycle of the product. Start charging disposal fees to companies for every plastic/non-recycleable bit, and your head will spin at how fast they can get us 90-100% repairable, recyclable, and re-useable products.