BrandonMarc

It's a shame Greta Thunberg's advisors, assistants, helpers, etc all fly around getting supplies & setting up meetings. Instead of, you know, the more carbon-efficient method of traveling the ocean via maritime ships.

Great Thunberg's coterie of helpers have a larger carbon footprint than the majority of us.

But hey ... at least it's not as bad as Prince Harry, who said every action matters (when telling the plebeians to stop their commercial air travel habit), and then took 4 private flights over the next two weeks.

Gotta love Gulfstream environmentalists.

Discuss climate change without discussing politics? Um ... how?

From the article:

How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet.

That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Fransisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.

And it’s led to swift growth for Bridgefy: downloads are up almost 4,000% over the past 60 days, according to Apptopia estimates (Apptopia is an app metrics company).

The app can connect people via standard Bluetooth across an entire city, thanks to a mesh network. Chatting is speediest with people who are close, of course, within a hundred meters (330 feet), but you can also chat with people who are farther away. Your messages will simply “hop” via other Bridgefy users’ phones until they find your intended target.

Sadly, coal power plants release more radiation directly into the atmosphere than nuclear, due to naturally occurring isotopes embedded in the coal ore.

So because they were so scared of potential radiation, they ended up ... getting definite radiation instead.

Winning!

I liked how in Freakonomics (I think), they interviewed someone who worked at a hospital, and would regularly and randomly take culture samples of nurses' and doctors' and administrators' hands. The results of the culture were shown on a screensaver.

This feedback and public transparency was both amusing, and enforcing of the necessary handwashing.

I liked how in Freakonomics (I think), they interviewed someone who worked at a hospital, and would regularly and randomly take culture samples of nurses' and doctors' and administrators' hands. The results of the culture were shown on a screensaver.

This feedback and public transparency was both amusing, and enforcing of the necessary handwashing.

Scott Alexander: Now r/SubSimulatorGPT2 has gotten to r/totallynotrobots, which means we get to see a robot pretending to be a human pretending to be a robot pretending to be a human.

Another side effect of the cold war - apathy. If the human race is going to nuke itself soon, anyway, what's the point doing things the right way, especially if that may make gas or food x% more expensive.

The fear of Armageddon is less now, but the defense mechanism takes far longer to wear off.

Yes ... so they have experience in crashing planes, which is relevant. /s

That's me, too. I've read the essay many times, and I'm always scratching my head either at how the pieces fit into the big picture, or what various components or jargon means. Like, what's a penstock? What is "head"? I can Google these things and eventually come to a pieced-together understanding, but it would be a lot more meaningful and educational if explained by one person.

My sister's pet rabbit was killed by a neighbor's Dalmatian. I figure every dog is different.

We track our spending based on budget categories. Grocery stores are the toughest, as items bought there might fall into the category of "food" or "personal care" or "household items" or "pets" or other categories.

Most receipts are easy - the name of the store is all we need to know what category that spending falls into. Grocery receipts we generally have to look at items and divide.

This sort of information would make that a whole lot easier.

We track our spending based on budget categories. Grocery stores are the toughest, as items bought there might fall into the category of "food" or "personal care" or "household items" or "pets" or other categories.

Most receipts are easy - the name of the store is all we need to know what category that spending falls into. Grocery receipts we generally have to look at items and divide.

This sort of information would make that a whole lot easier.

I prefer single-use paper. I put my recycleable materials into the paper bags, then toss that into the (single-stream) recycling dumpster - the paper is recycleable after all (and is often made of recycled paper).

Back when we went to the recycling facility in person, we would pre-sort and still use the paper bags.

I suspect, when used this way, paper beats plastic, environment wise (of course, there are better alternatives, like personal canvas bags, but that's another story).

If fossil fuels are the detritus of extinct plants, then plastic is just as "natural" as coal and oil ... in either case, it's a waste/byproduct of a life form/ecosystem that no longer exists.

Au contraire, a Marinara Trench sounds delightful!

Indeed, and China didn't always keep un-use-able plastic out of their river systems (therefore leading to the oceans). Now that China stopped accepting recycled plastic, it's going to countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, etc that not only can't handle the volume, but don't have the facilities in place to handle the plastic. Lots of plastic that consumers believe is recycled is indeed ending up in oceans.

Is it certain the stroke came before the fall? It may have caused the fall.

He's used to overpromising and then delivering far later than expected - it's worked so well for SpaceX.

Maybe he inherited Jobs' reality distortion field?

I just re-read this skit yesterday! Ha ha. "Rule number six: there is NO rule number six..."

What is SV?

She's a great writer and clearly a great pilot.

Is this natural for cherries? To be so vulnerable to a little water that they split/rot within a few hours? Seems odd, for a plant that lives outdoors.

Have cherries always been this way, across the centuries? Or is this an unexpected consequence of some GMO shenanigans?

I'm thinking: a fan the size of the ones they have on air boats - the flat-bottom boats with the giant powerful fan on the back? That kind.

Reminds me of what I hear over and over and over about the "crisis" shortage of truck drivers in America, and because of this "crisis" they just have to spend billions developing automated trucks that will put millions of current drivers out of work.

It's simple economics - if there truly is a shortage of drivers, offer a higher salary. Yes, it really is that simple.

There's no shortage of drivers - or of people who would become drivers. There's a shortage of people who will accept a low-ball wage, whereas with an autonomous truck you don't have to deal with inconvenient things like salary, health insurance, union dues, etc.

> This connection between soil to your gut is a marvelous thing.

Indeed, some research is pointing to the beneficial effects on your microbiome, too. The microscopic critters in the soil where you live may be very well co-evolved to live there, and there's a body of reasoning which says since you live there, too, they can be - sometimes - be very helpful to your own body.

(not that you should eat dirt, of course)

Maybe from the top of the US administration, yes. But from the guys over the nearby river, with their "plata o plomo" billboards ...

Maybe I'm wrong. I'll simply observe officials have various incentives to tweak the numbers in either direction.

... and the officials don't have an incentive to diminish the stats?

Which one would you suggest?

Which mayor was this?

(I think you meant "can't")