Venus doesn't have magnetic field. Because of it, Venus lost hydrogen from its atmosphere due to solar wind. Because of it Venus became very dry. So, it had not life and ways to fix CO2 in carbonates in water. It resulted in large accumulation of CO2 in atmosphere and strong greenhouse effect. It changed the way its mantle creates continents as dry mantle is not plastic. There is no plate tectonics on Venus. The surface changes every half a billion years in one large "supervolcanic" event.

Quite a while anybody could send information to Facebook users because Facebook implemented the open standard of Email.

Sure, I could send emails to your facebook account, but if I wanted to see any of your social media content, I would have to start a Facebook account and access it via Facebook's walled garden. If I want to use Google+ and you use Facebook....

It's as though you had to use a Verizon phone to have a conversation with other Verizon users, and you couldn't use your Verizon phone to contact people who use AT&T. The outcome is inevitably a monopoly due to Metcalf's law.

I don't want everybody to send me messages in an unfiltered way.

Your social network client could still have filters, but the filter would be something you control, and it wouldn't be as arbitrary as "you may only friend-request other facebook users, and only other facebook users may friend-request you."

As far as breaking up Facebook, I don't see a reason why they should have Instagram and WhatsApp but the core Facebook service can't be easily broken up.

Start with an open standard for friend requests; i.e. Google+ must accept friend requests from Facebook and vice versa. Any new startup would be able to create their own social networking client, capable of sending, accepting, and displaying friend requests, media shares, private messages, wall posts, etc. This would create a much better, more competitive system with vastly more consumer surplus.

Are there any examples of people in positions where their job is merely to take on a compartment of responsibility in another individuals life and to make them money?

For instance, a personal data scientist to make more money they are paid an individual with data about that individual

The homicide rate is 6.6 times what it is in America (US = 4.7 vs. SA = 31.0). And there are 107 countries with lower homicide rates than the US.

However, your specific locale in these countries and specific factors about you and your behaviors are more relevant than the overall homicide rate.

Epistemic status: anally extracted

Is sexual relationship between two consenting adult siblings ethically okay

I think it's probably like drunk driving -- most of the times it doesn't result in anything bad, but there's a non-negligible chance of outcomes so bad that the expected value still comes out negative.

should it be legal?

I haven't given much thought to that, but for some reason your proposed solution of "legal unless you have offspring" sounds more reasonable to my System 1 than the analogous "legal unless you have a crash" in the case of drunk driving.

Or maybe a better analogy would be any driving = any sex between siblings, drunk driving = sex between siblings without contraception? Then again, a law against sex between siblings without contraception doesn't sound easy to enforce to me.

Chemical warfare was only effective the first couple times it was used, i.e., before people invented the gas mask.

A single world language should be designed and promoted. Previous attempts have been too Eurocentric to take advantage of all useful grammatical features that are available.

Alternative option: English is already a de facto world language, and it is well suited to borrowing foreign terms when it needs to, but humanity should be ashamed that it conducts its main scientific, commercial and diplomatic operations in a language with such a defective writing system. Spelling reform (or a completely new, purely phonetic alphabet) is urgent. I would advocate adapting Hangul for that purpose.

any "reformed" spelling will necessarily look like ignorant spelling

It is much easier to do a spelling reform in a mostly illiterate country, where you can defend it by saying "look, most people can't read, we need to make it easier for them". Having a monarchy or dictatorship also helps to introduce the changes quickly and everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_Russian_orthography
Today I learned: Russian once had a letter for "th", but it was removed and replaced by either "f" or "t".

Greece lacks money, but they do have a whole lot of reasonably large, quite beautiful islands they barely use (only a small fraction of the 1200 islands are significantly inhabited) but which have the ideal Mediterranean climate for human habitation. Selling off sovereignty over these islands to other countries or to new country projects would be a great way to get some quick cash and there might be some downstream benefits, like increased trade in the region.

I’m asking after advice. Here’s my predicament;

I will soon fall over dead from social deprivation. I’m only exaggerating somewhat. I’m living in my hometown, where for unspecified reasons all previous contacts are lost to me. I am unlikely to be able to move for months, at least. I live far from rationalist circles. I’ve decided to try out the study hall to fill the gap a little (yet to do this, time for bed). I will also probably try to forge new circles by going to town and searching for groups to join that are at least adjacent to my interests. This feels (flagging for overconfidence) unlikely to work here, it’s a smallish town. Nice, but still, not academically active in a suitable fashion, that I've noticed.

There are specifics to group-finding in meatspace I am able to work out fine, so I don’t need help there. But that is the extent of my creativity. Am I missing something glaringly obvious? Please tell me I am.

EDIT: Issue solved! Thanks! :D