NeedMoreTea

You appear to be the some guy making up stuff, you provide no citations for any of your assertions.

Birds can fly away ya know, except they don't come with an IFR rating or instruments, a colossal area has burned -- I saw one estimate of around 8.5m ha (edit: which is over 32,000 square miles or more than Scotland's area) burned so far. So where are they flying away to in high temperature blackness, when the fire front might be moving faster than them? What about smoke inhalation, the biggest killer of people in domestic fires? Smoke from the fires has darkened the sky in Chile and New Zealand.

Thought provoking. To paraphrase to ensure I understand correctly, the meaning is the significance of the rule being another result of debate or decree, either of which prod the community to face in the same direction. Whether or not it appears to make sense is somewhat secondary to preserving and strengthening the coherence of the community (c.f. Papal decree and infallibility)?

As an atheist of Protestant heritage I've wondered on the secret sauce of religion that brings the obviously stronger sense of community, as it appears to run deeper than faith, and whether there are ways to achieve that in a secular context. Perhaps particularly difficult in an era when individual choice and consumerism is promoted as paramount. :)

Meaningless in the sense (I was probably far too throwaway and should have added context or explanation) that all religions (and most of our institutions) have layers of human added baggage, rules for rule's sake, and things that are done because that's how they are done. Things that might have made some sense when instituted, or in the context of first century Middle East, or a Medieval religious-focused society but look increasingly anachronistic in a modern, developed world. Clearly they couldn't predict the swathe of inventions and human change any more than the US founders could predict the later interpretations and re-interpretations of their relatively simple words.

As they become no longer of their time, it becomes the rule that is significant and the heritage, and becomes the heritage rather than the reason it might have been instituted way back when. Yet just about every society develops habits and rituals. Occasionally they turn out to be counter-productive to the adherents in a modern world. Now you certainly raise a good point about the experience of following -- the ritual itself can take on importance, and the community benefits are well known. Decline of community appears to be implicated in no end of modern problems, and whether secular or religious, anything that preserves it is to be lauded.

I'm surprised at the discussion spun up from the oven feature -- seems like some manufacturers may interpret the feature differently to others. Which is correct, and which right for Judaism, I'm unqualified to say. A sabbath mode elevator is, to my mind, a much more obvious and clean workaround that seems to preserve the spirit of the underlying idea.

Progress implies improvement. s/progress/change/

The end of peasantry was long before the rise of corporate, industrialised agriculture.

Like so many human activities, fashions, and innovations, the reduction in numbers required to work the land started off providing a benefit and ultimately went much too far. Looking at the destruction such as algal blooms in countless water courses from over fertilisation, steady soil erosion, loss of wild flora and fauna caused by industrialised agriculture and the colossal fields with a single crop, as far as the eye can see in every direction, it's hard to call it progress. It's change. Milk in shops is older than it was, homogenisation allows older milk to pass without notice. It's not progress, and hasn't been for quite some considerable time.

We have large, pretty, consistent fruit and vegetables, but there's been a 50% decline in nutrient content since the war, and a similar decline in taste -- frequently replaced by sugars. We've hugely increased systemic risk from use of monocrops as all it takes is a single virulent disease to put the entire world's production at risk -- see bananas.

Even the productivity gains are overstated. On the old mixed, family farm the raw individual crop productivity was far lower, but the chickens, pigs and plants overlapped such that the waste of one provided food or fertiliser for the others, the animals provided some degree of pest control, and as a whole the productivity was far better than usually assumed.

Industrialisation begets simplification, begets monoculture, for the sake of profit not progress.

Fair point, and I suspect I would find why Feinstein seems to have objected to (this|all) eruv as interesting as the root article, until discussion descends to minutiae anyway. Like most atlasobscura the article barely scratches the surface of what underlies.

This gets tricky. A weed is merely a plant in the wrong place.

We have a corner of garden that we left to nature to get a little wildlife oasis. The nettles and brambles nature added need regular effort to keep controlled, the dandelions are mostly benign in amongst the 6"-foot long grass, they don't dominate like they do on a cricket pitch length lawn.

I think they all had different adaptors and cables back then. Until the NEC multisync, different monitors too! The article isn't wide enough to need to mention the whole world of semi-compatible and non-compatible clones, such as the Tandy mentioned (that I think was a semi), others were from HP, Apricot (who were quite successful for a while, and at least one of their machines had a switchable semi mode, and a "better" Apricot non-compatible mode. Different stuff ran in each), Tulip and probably dozens of others I forget. Some ran DOS, had a x86 and all the other toys, but wouldn't run certain software, others deviated in hardware rather more to try and do something "better".

The whole PC market was a bloody confusing, incoherent mess for a while. A quagmire for a not fully clued up buyer.

Hmm. Average golf course is green monoculture that is a blight on landscape and eyesight, as are most lawns. It's the close cutting and grass only. Parks on the other hand have rougher grass in sensible combination with large expanses of trees, maybe a river or lake, flowers, paths, benches. A little oasis of beauty and calm in the ugly, angular city.

To reset my mind I take trees (that often come with some wild meadow and grass), or forest every time. A neatly trimmed lawn is for sports pitches.

Which was pretty much my starting point from OP's description. It makes sense relating to the sabbath rule as you describe here.

I generally try and stick to that perspective. I have no reluctance to just stop when I've lost hope it's worth continuing, or I'm not enjoying something. There's been a few I came back to years later and have been very glad I did. Or with more recent works where trilogies are more common, stop when it's clear the second isn't a patch on a promising first. My exception more than validated that I should never feel I "must" finish, that makes just stopping quite easy now.

The only exception I can think of turned out to be an exercise in extreme foolishness (and a little ignorance), that turned into bloody minded penance to finish the set come what may. Love Arthur C Clarke, loved Rendezvous with Rama, it really deserved a great continuation. Read Rama 2 and it was slow, plodding and amateurish whilst being a mostly terrible follow-on that ignored most of what was in the original. OK, even Arthur's allowed a dud, it has to get better.

Garden of Rama was far, far worse, plot so weak you cringe, bullshit characterisation and even the science was awful. Probably the worst book I have ever read, bar none. Wife assures me the only times I have had a habit of muttering or yelling at books were Rama 3 and 4, probably to "fucking get on with it", maybe to make sense. No detectable trace of Clarke in 3 whatsoever.

Fool that I am, I tried again with Rama Revealed. 400 pages of badly imagined, plotless, garbage science rambling, that's taxonomy and biology of alien spiders and essentially nothing else, followed by "oh shit, almost out of pages, better figure out a point to this drivel", so immediate pace and plot change to 50 odd of pages of a weak, cliched, poorly imagined wrap up of the "why" of all 4. Entirely predictable cliche as ending. Second worst book ever. So carrying on for 2.5 books was pointless self-torture.

Eventually found out, as it wasn't mentioned anywhere (it's tucked away on Lee's Wikipedia page, or was), that Clarke revealed he contributed only some ideas, Lee did all the atrocious writing on 2-4. Clarke on the cover is an outright con. Reread Rendezvous to cleanse my soul.

Live and learn, and oh boy did I learn. :)

Not sure they did, though perhaps later on after the industrial revolution. Early English coal for glassmaking, notably including Ravenscroft inventing lead crystal a little later in the century used sea coal: Coal with unique properties that washed up on beaches, mainly in the NE of England and East coast of Scotland. It had several other uses. Ships would transport it south daily. It burned far hotter than most regular mined coal, and was quite bituminous with very little ash. Not quite sure when it was first adopted as they discovered it burned hotter, though it was definitely part of the step forward of bottle production. Not sure when it was crowded out by other coals, as sea coal was relatively limited quantity, either. (Note there were one or two NE English inland seams of sea coal, with the unique properties, so descriptions can sometimes seem confusing).

Some photos of the industry's last death throes (apologies for DM link, but as always they include lots of pics): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2309040/The-twiligh...

Edit: BBC page and prog referencing its use in bottles (sea coal turns up surprisingly few references, and Wikipedia describes it incorrectly): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/RG2DjvRx861cLSWtwc...

Well without going into why and how I arrived at those views, or any religious heritage I may have had... That's far too deep an exploration for HN, and not likely to be productive.

Note also my response to your second comment to my original -- OP said nothing of it needing to be used before the sabbath. In terms of the eruv, what may be a gentle convenience or exception for a few neighbouring houses, or relations, seems to really stretch when it encompasses tens of thousands+ in multiple city regions. Though I note from other comments regarding Feinsten, if accurate, that some noted Jewish scholars appear to have thought the concept stretched the point too.

In fairness, that does put a rather different complexion on it, as OP didn't mention it needing to be done the preceding day. "After a random delay of up to a minute, the oven turns on." As described it merely gets you a few random seconds pause after pushing the button and setting temp, thus screams of "cheat mode", which seems at odds with your description. Setting a timer to come on tomorrow at roughly 3pm doesn't feel like it's quite so blatantly breaking the spirit of a rule for the day, as press then maybe you wait 1s, maybe 59s. Whether a next day timer is also bending the rule is a much finer judgement...

So now I'm not sure how to interpret.

Goodreads was far more useful before it became a part of Amazon, though maybe it was declining before that -- I guess before it got too popular. Much like imdb. Where once I found both useful, nowadays I don't ever bother except maybe after reading something where I am diametrically opposed to the universe and reviews. :)

I never quite figured out what changed -- whether it was gaming and abuse, Amazon buying and caring only about more sales, or simply no longer disproportionately early adopting geeks (inc me!). All I know is neither goodreads or imdb are the slightest use in deciding if I might enjoy something, where once they had been, and in its earliest days (when you downloaded db and client) imdb was almost frighteningly, telepathically good.

Just as I don't need to study homeopathy or alchemy for a decade to have an informed opinion of it, I've had more than enough education on and experience of religion to take a view. Most of it appears to be holdover from ancient and medieval periods when people of a powerful group set the rules. Which is not discounting faith itself.

Which is by the by to the point -- if the rules are there, the amount of effort spent to creatively discount them feels like nothing other than blatant cheating. A sleight of hand.

This and the eruv all comes across to me as blatant cheating for convenience.

Pressing Bake turns the oven on after a random delay, if you didn't press Bake the oven wouldn't turn on at all. Ergo you turned the oven on, no matter how much you lawyer speak your way around it.

Just reinforces how ludicrous the meaningless rules are, that surround all religions.

re 1950s: For how they're spaced, not how life is. Most will disappear from towns and cities, but remain, thrive and perhaps increase along routes. :p

We'll replace petrol stations with using the areas for roadside stops with cafe, shop and charging station. The picture will be more like the 1950s than today with perhaps fewer overall. Humans will still want a break, lunch, opportunity to take a leak, stretch their legs etc... add top up charging to it and you've reinvented the gas station and roadside diner.

Talking of Attenborough, it's difficult to stay hopeful after seeing his one hour Climate Change - The Facts, despite Attenborough's optimism at the end. The time lapse sequences from satellite of deforestation, destruction, pollution etc to an extent rarely seen really puts our species' suicidal, destructive tendencies in context.

For me it was far more "we're fucked" than inspiring call to action. Haven't given up trying yet, though I am not at all hopeful now.

That type of litmus test is hardly new, even in UK politics which tends to trail the worst US "innovations" in politics and campaigning.

Blair got a fair few votes as he had a nice smile, the Tories tried to demonise him with their "demon eyes" campaign. Go back further and there were elements of the same in Michael Foot losing election against Thatcher. He famously attended a national event in very poor weather and wore a brand new coat, chosen by his wife, that the right wing press tried -- very, very successfully -- to brand as a donkey jacket, and him a bottom of the heap disorganised type, when it was just a normal, formal and supposedly very expensive duffel coat.

Or Attlee against Churchill at the tail end of WW2. Churchill was going around in style, using an election train and limousine. Attlee was going around casually mixing with the troops who were starting to come back from Europe, and talking to the people, as one of the people. Thus Britain's great war winning leader was resoundingly kicked out, in a Labour landslide in July 45 -- between VE Day and VJ Day.

True, though I was more thinking of the computing context, where what went before might have been a VT100 or 52, maybe a Wyse or IBM.

The IPCC recommendations are fine -- where do I dispute them? I don't. Did the double negative throw you? I point out no government is taking notice of them. Can you name one government that is responding to the IPCC recommendations appropriately? As seen at the UN COP25 climate summit in December, substantive action appears no closer than decades ago. If they were taking note of IPCC reports, we might have had a far more inspiring result.

The EU are nearest to meeting IPCC recommendations, and have taken some worthwhile steps forward, but so far not nearly enough, though they committed to net zero by 2050 shortly after the failed COP25. Most of the rest of the world is doing nothing, or worse. Don't forget emissions are still rising, coal and gas plants still being built, and new oil fields explored.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/15/cop25-un-cli...

To add to the many good comments, it's also very low population density -- at 18 people per km^2. Being well down in the southern hemisphere, it's well out of the way when the fighting and desperate mass migration kicks off. It's probably no coincidence it was one of the last land areas to gain humans.

If. COP25, the 25th year, was a farce of self-interest from fossil producers. Australia found a way to fiddle their historic figures to claim they need take no action! No one's listening to the IPCC, except those not running countries (except maybe some of the smaller, poorer ones).

Thanks. Have to say I'm surprised, think I have a new period of history to read up on for 2020!

The late Albert Bartlett, who debunks infinite growth so easily. If you haven't seen it I agree it's highly recommended. It should be compulsory viewing for all politicians.

Hmm, heavier desks may have contributed, but at least in my early career I've not had an office -- it was usually 4-8 people per room.

Drinking clean water, watching Netflix and utilising over 50% of the earth's entire landmass. The best, most fertile, most productive half.

What are we planning on doing, digging up a trillion tonnes of the formerly fertile soil from previous areas and transporting it? I very much doubt that Antarctica and northern Russia have soils that are as amenable to agriculture after a few millennia frozen solid. Even if the area were enough, which it isn't, yields would likely plummet.

Civilisations collapsed in the distant past, migrated and fell, yet there was a glut of available land everywhere. So hardly surprising here we still are -- we were nowhere near limit. Somewhere else fertile and usable could be found. Borders weren't controlled.

To give a rough example, the UK currently has a population around 68,000,000. The black death in the 1350s led to the population falling from around 3m to 1-1.5m. London's population fell 60% from 120,000. I don't know the population during the Roman civilisation period, but well under a million. 200k perhaps? That's a hell of a lot more area per person, and a huge amount of scope to relocate come catastrophe.

p.s. The West has more forest than a century ago because most of Europe's forest was clear cut centuries ago. What's been planted particularly in the 19th and first half of the 20th century is monoculture forestry, completely unrelated to the former temperate rain forests and other mature native forests that once thrived, long ago. It's certainly nothing to crow about.

Back in the 80s when everyone in the office was using one, no one apparently cared or noticed the noise. Though we didn't have everyone hiding behind cans and there was often a bit of a coffee shop lite buzz of background chatter.

I think everyone got over sensitive about it as we all hide behind a playlist.