Congrats to Saildrone! I am surprised that the article did not discuss the dramatic force structure re-evaluation that needs to be going in light of the Ukrainian non-navy dominating the Black Sea, instead of the framing of Russian incursions in the Baltic Saildrone type assets seem well poised to be a part of that small, distributed, networked type of sea control.
Deloitte's acquisition of BearingPoint's Federal practice in 2008-9. Fascinating to watch from the inside -- literally the same people increased revenue & margins with happier employees, primarily driven by implementing a better management and incentives culture with better HR practices. Also interesting that Deloitte hired their corporate M&A integration group to run the integration for themselves.
It's true the LCDM is the consensus, so this result is even stronger from an outsider's perspective since the lead author apparently comes from the LCDM community, not the MOND community.
Specifically: “I have been working under the hypothesis that dark matter exists, so this result really surprised me,” Chae said. “Initially, I was reluctant to interpret our own results in favor of MOND. But now I cannot deny the fact that the results as they stand clearly support MOND rather than the dark matter hypothesis.”
Wow, how did this get published in Nature? Anthony Lewandowski is not an outlier in Silicon Valley, supported by a citation of the author's own (non-peer reviewed) article... I mean given all the ink spilled over him, whatever you think, he's definitely an outlier.
I would say it is more than the world, we use language to discuss our intentions, desires, beliefs, willingness, etc. All of which there is value to speakers to being ambiguous. Some languages are even better than English at giving speakers the ability to dial up or down ambiguity when expressing ostensibly the same intention, in ways that a careful listener would find signal in.
The take that I had the most curiosity about was #4.
I get where it comes from, but what I observed when I was in the military was if you asked staff in the operations center about data they would say, something like "we've got two drone feeds, GPS trackers, field reports.. we're drowning in all this data we can't look at it all..." Okay, great we got some money from the theater, we can get anything you want, what do you want? "Another drone feed." It seems that even if you can't use all your data right now, the long run answer to today's unanswered questions is usually more data, or did I not understand something about that take?
Some problems people don't try to solve because they don't realise there's a solution available - or don't conceive of the fact that, if they spent enough, one could be developed.
If you take a time machine back to the year 2000 and talk to people who collaborate on documents and ask them what would make their lives easier, very few of them will say "invent an online browser-based real time collaborative document editing system" - many will just want more time, and consistent file naming when e-mailing back and forth modified word documents.
Are you the TerrAvion? Very impressed by the company you've built, and didn't realize you had a military background.
I've heard it described by the NGA as the "success-catastrophe of big data." They are struggling to figure out wtf to do with a data source like Planet that is daily, everywhere. Change detection has turned out to be WAY harder than anticipated, so most of it goes not only unseen but also un-analyzed. It's a giant waste of valuable information that is still locked up in servers of AWS and Google Cloud.
Given the line of sight limitation for drones, gas power does not add much value. Batteries are usually sufficient to map/photograph the area within range of the operator. Given this legal limitation, it is often more economical to hire a small plane like a Cessna with an avionics package and a 400 mi range.
But that's exactly what's missing from all this discussion of voting systems, if the US and UK are your examples of "failed" democracies these experts obviously haven't considered the full range of how voting works. Living in a city that has instant run off voting it is clear that first past the post has some important advantages that voting system gurus seem to discount--namely it forces pre-negotiation and coalitions before questions are put to the voters. It is impossible for a voting system to inquire what the will of the body politic is on all questions as all times like it is an oracle--but if you construct a system that poses choose A or B question and there's education (campaigning) around that choice, the electorate can make a reasonably informed decision about whether A or B is better. Viewing voters as a static oracle to be consulted misses the whole point which is to actually get the electorate to make a decision since all things are not possible and government inevitably picks policies that favor some interests over others. In fact, suppression of heterodox policy party ideas in policy making (while protecting their expression through a strong 1st amendment) seems like one of the greatest features (not a bug) of US democracy.
I think that the citizens have kind of lost the whole idea of "representative".
Voters now want to send people to Congress who will carry out a specific agenda. But the idea of a representative is that you were sending someone with (more or less) your general views, and they would use their own judgment.
This whole "pre-negotiation and coalitions before questions are put to the voters" might be more the problem than the solution.
Your second and third paragraphs seem to be at odds with each other? Negotiating (whether pre or post) and forming coalitions is exactly what you'd expect proper representatives to do.
Representatives, yes. Political parties before elections, not so much (which is the point of the bit I was quoting in the third paragraph). Especially not so much if people expect the representatives to be bound by those negotiations for the duration of their terms, rather than actually using judgment as their term unfolds.
> if the US and UK are your examples of "failed" democracies these experts obviously haven't considered the full range of how voting works.
"Obviously?" Perhaps they have considered it properly and have reasonably concluded both systems are utterly failed in terms of representing the views of the electorate. As an outsider looking in US politics appears equally broken, just sometimes in different ways.
So now let me stay on ground I am more sure of, the UK. It's one of the least representative "democracies" around.
For most of the electorate it simply doesn't matter who they vote for, it's pointless. Most seats are "safe". Where I currently live, if you have anything but Brexit-Tory views don't bother as the seat hasn't changed hands in years. So consider yourself entirely disenfranchised. We get especially poor candidates as a result - from both parties. A cardboard cutout would probably get elected if wearing a blue rosette.
If you have Tory views, and live in one of those nice £1m+ warehouse flat conversions you are probably now in a permanently safe Labour inner-city seat, and are equally disenfranchised. cardboard equally electable, just give it a red rosette.
The percentage in a given constituency who get the government they voted for is often quite shocking. CGP Grey did a video on this if I recall correctly.
What does that do to politics? Well, it's total war, total victory and total annihilation only. Parties only treat the electorate as even vaguely interesting in the 10% of seats that might change hands.
No one negotiates. Beforehand or otherwise, unless every other avenue to grab power has failed. System working as intended then as it tends to reinforce the two party status quo.
"Woo, we got elected, just." Now it's simple. Every policy of the previous government was crap. Even the really good ones that were proven to be working. No matter, we didn't think them up, so get rid of the policy with extreme prejudice. We'll rename the same policy when writing our next manifesto so that we can imply we did invent it next time.
> namely it forces pre-negotiation and coalitions before questions are put to the voters.
When did the US last have a coalition, or even pre-negotiation?
In the UK we had one, successfully, during WW2. Since then there has been one, but a selection of minority governments. The recent coalition is widely considered to have been a failure. Essentially we got Tory govt, with a few rough edges knocked off. Tories got a convenient kicking partner.
> the electorate can make a reasonably informed decision about whether A or B is better.
Gosh that's a positive view of how it works. In our media-first, FPTP, system it is much more about the media friendly face, nice smile, soundbites and dog whistles. Interviews become an excruciating exercise of answering the question you'd like to have been asked like it's a Monty Python sketch.
May gave us a comical example of doing soundbites and interviews wrong with the "strong and stable government" line that everyone, including the media, were sick of on the very first day of campaign. After a term or two "it's about time we gave the other guys a chance" and "I'm sick of these idiots" becomes a significant influence.
In short I am firmly in favour of electoral reform and adoption of PR (and not the second-class incarnation of it we were given a referendum about during the coalition). I'd quite like to figure out a way to weaken party politics too, but I digress. In my twenties I was quite in favour for FPTP as I felt it enabled more to be done. Nowadays I'd like a lot less done and a system that a) encourages consensus day to day and b) provides a parliament representative of the far wider range of views commonly held than two diametrically opposed parties. This became far, far too long so I'll spare you the deeper reasoning in favour of PR. :)
My own politics is a coalition - I like some parts of Tory, Labour, Green and LibDem. Even during my most focused support of one party I found some of their policies were utterly bonkers. I think that's the case with most aside from the tiny, tiny minority who actually join parties.
