I agree with everything you've said, but modern technologies aren't the only issue. The fact is that many food crops are hybrids that don't breed true, and it's been like that for many decades. That is, you can save seeds, even legally, but within one or two generations the plants revert to form, losing their desired characteristics and "hybrid vigour".
To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a GMO wheat. Yet saving seed at scale hasn't been viable since at least the 1960s.
There was a recent post asking what the self-taught among us feel we are missing from our knowledge base. For me, it's being able to calculate stuff like that for making decisions. I feel like I can spot an equivalence to the travelling salesman problem or to the halting problem a mile away, but anything more subtle is beyond me.
Of course, in this situation, I'd probably just see if I could find a sufficiently large precalculation and just pretend :)
What you are describing is a failure of education. Maybe not at the university level, but somewhere. When I taught at an adult vocational school in the 1990s, every course started with the same material: how to use a keyboard and mouse, how to use the operating system, how to navigate and use network resources, and how to use foundational software like word processors, spreadsheets , and data entry systems. And how to set up email clients.
We ran our own email server out of the networking class. Yes, it could be a bit flaky, but that just exercised their backup and recovery skills and kept all the email users on their toes. :)
I don't think that the uniqueness of fingerprints is in doubt, but their analysis and use might not be up to snuff. I've read numerous articles over the last couple of decades that call into question at least the statistical underpinnings of what it means to declare a match.
But law enforcement in general seems to be filled with pseudoscience, from profiling and interview techniques to body language and lie detection.
Laziness on the part of the listener. I have worked jobs that have a high proportion of immigrants from various countries. If I concentrate and ask for them to slow down or use different words and phrases, it really doesn't take that long to come to grips with it. Of course, that depends on having a willing partner, but I've rarely had people fight against mutual understanding.
I've occasionally been stumped by an accent, even a regional accent in my own language. That said, I tend to think that difficulty with accents is mostly laziness.
There is a lot of good discussion here, but I'd like to toss in something else. Look around at the society we live in. Corporations don't care about health and well-being. Insurance companies don't care about health and well-being. Political leaders don't care about health and well-being. Pundits and think tanks don't care about health and well-being.
Caring, volunteering, and donation all require the right frame of mind. Between the stress of daily survival and the messages we get from the people with the most power and the loudest voices, it surprises me that anyone is still donating.
I also prefer thematic instances, but try to find appropriate communities within those instances. Just because it's coming from NASA, doesn't make it astronomy.
Depending on which aspects of the project you think are important and want to discuss there are a few communities here that might be relevant.
Earth Science includes environment, and environmental impact seems to be the most popular talking point so far.
Noise and other forms of pollution are public health issues and there is a local community for that, although I'm not sure it's really a great fit there.
Physics might be another choice due to the fact that a lot of physics is going into the engineering of something that reduces sonic booms.
Or maybe you just need to find the right thematic instance. For example, I'm registered on slrpnk for my climate, energy efficiency, and anarchism fixes.
On the grounds that a big and valuable chunk of territory that is currently being shared shows signs of being unilaterally fenced off. I'm not suggesting that Canada has a better claim, but it's important for procedures to be followed.
Edit: I wanted to get my wording right, so I went back to the article:
The legality of all this is a bit hazy, Treadwell explains in a post for the Wilson Center. To make the definition official, the US has to submit data and reports to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). However, the US has not ratified UNCLOS due to complex political disagreements (the agreement has been ratified by 168 states and the European Union).
This leaves some uncertainty around how the proposition will be accepted under international law.
I hope Canada at least pretends to push back.
There is a toggle in the admin settings to enable/disable downvotes, and several instances do disable them.
I didn't realize that.
Strictly as a user, from what I can tell, there doesn't seem to be anything that resembles rampant abuse of downvotes. I'm glad that is what is visible at the admin level.
Carry on, you're doing great work as a community builder/manager.
I think of my username as being like a lock on the door. It's not going to stop someone who is dedicated to fucking with me, but it keeps the opportunistic fuckery at bay.