fwungy

Try cutting down trees on your forested property in California. Environmental regulations can make that really tricky.

California should have regular wildfires. It's part of the ecosystem. Government regulations that prevent fires have created the tinder box we have now.

Is the real split in this country between liberals and conservatives?

Or is about whether the political contest we observe is mostly genuine or mostly constructed?

Are we watching UFC or WWF?

UFC gives the impression of an authentic contest with real outcomes while WWF is generally understood and portrayed as a form of theater. People who identify in the liberal cluster tend to take the media narratives quite seriously, and despise people who show suspicion of popular media. They call them "conspiracy theorists" pejoratively.

The conservative cluster types are more widely ranging. Many have no objection to individual freedom and expression around things like abortion, drugs, or sexuality because they believe in individual freedom and responsibility: you can do what you like until it harms others AND it isn't my job to help you execute or recover from whatever silly thing you choose to undertake, I can do it if I choose.

This is likely the dominant conservative ideology, and yet it is virtually never portrayed in the media. What we see instead of a paternalistic Christianity presented as conservativism.

Perhaps that is why conservatives tend to distrust the media?

Sure you have. That's the way the corporate technology hype machine works. So many amazing things are perpetually just around the corner: cold fusion, cancer vaccines,cheap powerful batteries. Invest now!

Practice non-distraction. Start little.

Decide, for example, that you're going to make your bed. Then don't do anything but make your bed. Don't check your phone in the middle or go on a side quest to dust the headboard. Just make your bed.

Just keep practicing that on easy things and you'll get better. The key is to set tasks that you can achieve. As your brain gets used to this it will let you do more involved tasks undistracted.

Eventually you'll be able to non-self-distract for 30 minutes, at which point you can strategically use your time and make major accomplishments. That's about as long as anyone can work without some sort of break. If you can stack 10-15 good half hours in a day of work you're going to take over the world.

The CDC Red Book used to list the chances of a permanent or fatal response to polio as being < 0.5%. They took that out a while ago when people started citing it.

Oftentimes you find that a bad outcome to an illness, especially when rare, is associated with an extenuating circumstance. Covid, for example, isn't all that dangerous to young people with healthy BMIs. OTOH it is very dangerous to the elderly with multiple comorbidities, i.e. people who are in danger under any condition and need careful care.

Medicines and vaccines can be wonderful and life saving, but speaking as someone who has professionally reviewed trial data, they needed to be treated with great care.

The potential for unintended consequences is always high with powerful new medications. Techno philia and corporate greed can often get in the way of good science.

It wasn't enough data to be interesting to anyone.

An entire apple got me up over 180 as did half a bag of In N Out fries with no ketchup, and I'm not diabetic. Glucose response is very personalized. One monitor for two weeks was enough to convince me I should follow a low carb/keto diet. The instant feedback of the CGM was very motivating.

Low carb has been amazing for me. I have much better energy and strangely enough my vision has improved. I know because I can read small type on my phone when I wake up without reading glasses. I almost never need my reading glasses since I started low carb/keto, and was using them daily prior to that.

Even the Bible called for Jubilee years when all debts were forgiven.

In the modern paradigm we are all slaves to whomever controls the currency, and there is no off-ramp.

Yeah. I tried a Constant Glucose Monitor for fun. Seeing what fruit did to my glucose levels was shocking.

It means splitting the country politically so that it is impossible to generate opposition to the leadership.

It's pretty clear that that is the modus operandi.

The government funded misery industry has metastasized in SF.

The Romans managed their empire with divide and conquer tactics.

Guns, abortion, trans issues are just red meat the corporations throw to the masses to keep their eye off what's really going on.

What's really going on? The pensions and retirements of the middle class are being drained away with inflationary monetary policy to pay for wars around the world and keep the corporate class on top.

We are free to fight to the death about sex and guns, but there's no effective discussion of the murderous, planet killing US war machine and the parasites who profit from it in the public discourse. What a coincidence. Divide and conquer.

CO2 has been a constant part of the atmosphere at 0.01-0.05% forever.

The atmosphere is sensitive to small changes. So what might introducing new particles to the atmosphere do?

What could possibly go wrong with this irreversible experiment?

Fox doesn't have the same bench it did. There is no one with the credibility and charisma of Carlson left. When O'Reilly left they still had some talent.

Scientific American is the new Newsweek. How the mighty have fallen.

Fox News just banned itself by getting rid of Carlson. He was their most popular host by far, and the rest of their popular evening lineup depended on his lead in.

They're going to cellar to CNN.

The original phrase was coined by the World Economic Forum. What the critics leave out is that the WEF was saying that people would be happier not owning anything.

>You will own nothing and you will be happy.

Alternatively it could have a darker interpretation: you will be a slave and you will be happy, because that's all you're going to get.

I suppose it depends if you look at the WEF as a benevolent institution looking to benefit humanity or very rich people looking to solidify their own position at any cost.

Without knowing the VMT of driverless vehicles it's impossible to compare their safety to drivered vehicles.

The first 80% of AI tasks will be easy enough. The next 20% will be increasingly difficult with the last 1% virtually impossible. Same with driverless cars.

So you have all the heat pumps going on full blast on the coldest days, all together. It's a huge spike in energy demand. As long as the grid can deliver it fine, but when it doesn't the potential is catastrophic. Natural gas heating is far less grid dependent. Even if you lose power you could run a gas furnace with a small generator. Not the case with a heat pump.

Rationally speaking we can only turn the ship as fast as it can turn. Rushing and forcing things to happen that do not have a solid foundation (i.e. a suitable large and reliable grid) are just going to cause problems.

Global South, i.e. BRICS+, sells and consumes huge amounts of oil.

Russia has proven mineral reserves of $75T, most in the world by a fat margin. If they stop selling their oil they're done, and so are China, India, Japan, and parts of Europe. BRICS don't have the ability to drop oil without catastrophic impacts on their food and energy systems.

>Yikes

Climate science is hard. The margins of error are wide. They already have a track record of being overly aggressive on predictions.

Germany thought they'd have cheap Russian gas from Nordstream. Now they're looking to move manufacturing to the US because energy is too expensive.

Look at it this way, even is CO2 levels are primarily anthropogenic, most of the world isn't willing to do anything about it substantial (i.e. Global South). In which case the Western economies martyring themselves isn't going to change anything.

OTOH, if climate change is not primarily anthropogenic the West martyring itself with expensive green energy decisions is a disastrous mistake.

What is the game theoretical optimal move here?

Yes, but at that point it's like running an AC during a hot Summer day. The compressor will be working very hard to keep up with -20.

Our leaders have lost their minds pursuing green purity. It's a religion at this point.

Washington is unique in its hydropower positioning. It's easy to electrify in Washington because it makes sense to do so. Hydropower is cheap and clean.

Unfortunately it's not a replicable model for the rest of the country.

A chemical is a compound that has been purposefully refined or purified.

A chemical fire is far more complex and potentially dangerous than a normal fire.

Gasoline is a chemical, however we have a lot of experience dealing with gasoline driven fires and they can be easily doused with water. Large battery driven fires in vehicles are a new thing, and they are not easily doused with water.

When a lithium-ion battery catches fire, it can be very hard to extinguish and can burn very fiercely³. If a battery is going to catch fire, the likely cause is thermal runaway¹. This is when a battery experiences an increase in temperature that eventually leads to cell short-circuiting or disintegration that can spark a fire¹. There are three main abuse factors that can send a battery into thermal runaway — mechanical, thermal or electrical¹. The contents of the battery are under pressure, so if a metal fragment punctures a partition that keeps the components separate or the battery is punctured, the lithium reacts with water in the air vigorously, generating high heat and sometimes producing a fire².

(1) What are the lithium-ion-battery fire risks & safety issues?. https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/battery-fire-lithium-i.... (2) Just how concerned should the solar industry be about battery fires?. https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/02/just-how-conce.... (3) Why Lithium Batteries Catch Fire - ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/why-lithium-batteries-catch-fire-6.... (4) Can Batteries Catch On Fire? Do They Ever Explode? - Firefighter Insider. https://firefighterinsider.com/batteries-catch-fire-or-explo.... (5) Lithium Battery Fires: How to Spot the Warning Signs. https://www.erieinsurance.com/blog/lithium-battery-fires.

They're being forced to do it.

The natural market for EVs is a maximum of 20%. The cost/benefit is only positive for certain use cases.

Ford can't sell its Lightning F150 EVs. They just had a fire on one of the holding lots too that burned a bunch of them down. I guess they'll have to take the insurance.

Fun fact about EV fires: they're a chemical reaction, not an ordinary fire. Removing the oxygen source like you would with an ICE fire doesn't work.

SF is Rube Goldberg device of juice boxes feeding juice boxes. Works great until the Feds can't print juice.

It's actually the impact of the paper that matters, how many cites it gets.

How about an article on the unequal impacts of prison, suicide, and homelessness?

Historically once people recognize the media is not trustworthy they discount it. You see this in the former USSR countries. People don't take the media seriously like they do in the west.