Try building a solar farm(s) tall enough that shaded villages may be built beneath them...
Use solar energy to pump sea, or polluted water to the top of a tower of filters;
Let gravity cause the water to pass through filters, and spiral turbines;
Take nearly potable water to an electrolysis vat;
Capture hydrogen for fuel cell generated electricity;
Capture oxygen for waste water treatment;
Electrolysis leaves micro and nano plastics at the bottom of the vat; etc...
Just a few suggestions.
When the last of Glass-Steagall (G-S) was repealed not only was Wall Street allowed to mix risky, any damn thing they can create and sell, with less risky investments, read: mortgages, they also were able to eliminate the boring, read: affordable, Savings and Loan (S&L) financial institutions. This allowed Wall Street to access, read: dominate, the biggest financial transactions most folks will ever make: home mortgages.
To get living indoors back to where most people can afford it will require a return of, something similar to, G-S, S&L and Postal (state) Banking.
My 23 year old house has gained, in price, over 100% of the cost to build it. We can't cash in on that value, because we (wife and I) would still need to purchase or rent another, overvalued, place to live.
My son, an engineer, and his wife, a registered nurse, can't buy a home in California, because they can't afford it! So, they pay ludicrously high rent; more than twice the monthly mortgage payment I pay in Texas.
The aforementioned is ridiculous, and can only be fixed by progressive Democrats restoring regulation to mortgage lending; reduced home prices and mortgage payments will force down apartment rents to prevent all the tenants from leaving.
That's why I am running for state House of Representatives in Texas and supporting Democrats running for office nation wide.
The government of Israel is on the path to becoming a significant part of the problem in the current crises in the Middle East.
The terrorist actions of Hamas on October 7th, 2023 required a response from Israel, and it has happened; is becoming, more and more, a part of the problem. A precisely targeted response in Gaza would have been appropriate in the eyes of many observers, but the serious overreaction by Israel has caused apprehension from some who had initially supported Israel's military activity.
If the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can't, can't be bothered to, demonstrate significant restraint might the Knesset try again to use a vote of no confidence to rein in said government?
The excuse of, ”during a war,” has been used in the first, failed effort at a vote of no confidence in the Knesset. The excuse is hard to believe since the war is, currently, mostly Israeli military activity. The war could be paused, and the IDF assume a defensive posture, while the Israelis fix the problem of a government perceived as cruel, perhaps criminal, in it's extreme response to the recent provocation.
If not, could the IDF use the opportunity to declare that it can not follow illegal orders. Criminal allegations, of genocide (by Israel), have been filed by South Africa in the International Court of Justice. Most of the citizens of Gaza, whose only fault was that they live in a place that Hamas has been allowed to occupy, bear the brunt of the IDF's assault. Hamas had started as the elected government of Gaza, and has stayed in power; refused to leave.
Next option to be considered might be an international intervention initiated by the United Nations. The assumption, that some have made, is that the USA could just order a cease fire, and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would readily capitulate, is just wrong.
Perhaps a two state solution, with a proposed new Palestinian state in the Sinai: sharing an eastern border with Israel; western border parallel, approximately 100km from the eastern border; northern border on the Mediterranean Sea; southern border on the Gulf of Aqaba.
Palestinian residents would move there, if they will, voluntarily from Gaza and the West Bank. The new territory would have the potential for significant economic prosperity; be objected to strenuously by the surrounding nations from whom little, to no, constructive help has ever been proferred.
Given the long historic/prehistoric tendency to violence in the Middle East the whole plan would require international insistence to succeed.
Something must change, and this is a proposal to consider.
The orange menace knew that he'd lost the presidential election in November of 2020, and knew that leaving the office of the President would create an opportunity for civil and, potentially, criminal allegations against him to proceed. A life long ability to avoid being held to account could end.
So, the last few months of the 45th administration was spent attempting to find any means to avoid the inevitable exit of the orange menace from the White House.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” 45 tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020. Just one of several of his tweets promoting the day. “Be there, will be wild!” An open invitation to insurrection for 45's loyal MAGAt supporters on the day that a joint session of congress would certify the results of the recent presidential election.
On January 6th, 2021 the exiting president spoke to the crowd gathered near the capital and invited the crowd to walk to the Capital while insisting that law enforcement and Secret Service agents remove the magnetometers that detect and stop those carrying guns from approaching the Capital.
These, and quite a few other means, were attempted to overturn the election, upheld against every challenge in the courts and certified in the US Congress, of a new president.
It has been proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the activities before, during and after the elections of November 2020 were an attempted insurrection. That the 45th president encouraged and participated in said insurrection is clear. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution is also absolutely clear in it's intent that such activity shall prohibit any who have taken, and broken, an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution from any office where said sworn oath will be required again.
It is not clear that the current SCOTUS justices understand this rather straight forward concept that would allow states to ban insurrectionists from the ballot for elected office in their state's elections.
If
SCOTUS does not allow states the ability to control access to the
ballots, in their states, they will forever be known as the enablers of
the next insurrection.
A state legislator, Scott Wiener, in California has recently proposed legislation to force companies working with AI to test code/software before releasing any product to market. This is apropos because the business of business is profit and there is often a tendency to rush product/services to market to increase potential profits; consequences be damned.
I suggest the following as an addition to said legislation; any AI related regulation:
Creating and publishing fictitious content using AI technology in any way, shape or form without a disclaimer identifying the use of said technology can be assumed to have been created and published with malicious intent;
Creating, and publishing, an image that bears any resemblance to an existing person(s), or write and publish text that uses the content from, or identity of, an existing individual(s) without a disclaimer identifying the work as fiction, and including notifications that consent was/wasn't attained, then the fiction can be considered to have been created and published with malicious intent;
If a publication, of any sort, allows fictitious content of their own, or of others, creation to be made available for public consumption on their site, it may be assumed that said content is shared with malicious intent.
I suggest this, and any other carefully considered, regulation of the use of AI to be necessary, because computer/telecommunications technology is incredibly powerful and omnipresent in the world today. Said technology need not be intentionally malicious to be the cause of very bad consequences, but the results need be thoroughly reviewed to attain reasonable certainty, one way or the other; corrected, as needed. It would be better if said adverse results were discovered, by sufficient testing, and averted before software/product has been released out into the world.
The federal government would be the best place for said legislation to occur, but they've been hampered, intentionally (by a Republican majority in Congress in 1995), when the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was defunded; effectively eliminated.
No legislative official can be expected to be fluent in everything that legislation must address, so investigative agencies (reporting to any legislative body) are essential. The Republican legislators knew that when they destroyed the OTA.
The Government Accounting Office has created the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics (STAA) to do what the OTA had done. STAA has recently, in 2024, published informative documents related to AI (GAO-24-106246 and GAO-24-107237).
Sufficient understanding and regulation of technology, including AI, is both possible and essential.
