lovemenot

I cannot speak for the people responsible for drafting those treaties, but it appears to have been a timely effort to apply multi-lateral pressure against proliferation. Put another way: for some nations to pull up the ladder. Not long-term thinking perhaps, but medium term at least.

In the longer term, who could have known then or even cared how to maintain the transition to a no-test regime? What the treaties' drafters might have been thinking is now moot. Those people are long gone, it's your problem now.

In the special case of tunneling in order to bury high voltage power cables, the power source for boring could be quite remote.

>> does the shinkasen make a detour to rural agricultural areas?

They generally follow the natural route between large cities. This route is in the valleys which are already relatively populated because they are not the mountains which comprise most of japan. There are two, three or more types of high speed rolling stock on the same lines. The older, slower trains are cheaper between cities and have more local stops.

You are right about people's current opinions, but seem to be assuming that given a better option, people would continue to make sub-optomal choices.

If so, I don't agree. Your small minority's job is to deliver those alternatives, and to feed the flames while the rest of the world makes the transition. Which they will do because the next thing is clearly so much better.

Have more faith in most of humanity and doubt yourself and similar others for having failed so far to disrupt this industry with better technology.

It's ironic that you have opted to castigate an entire cadre of people (MBA holders) rather than to focus solely on the bad behaviour (scapegoating) done by whomsoever.

Nope, I get your meaning and it wasn't mine.

I see economic processes like physical ones. Water flows downhill, never up. Sure, there are huge spectacular waterfalls like your most hated billionaire. But that's essentially still the same downhill flow process as a meandering wide river.

We can discuss the best route from top to bottom. Fine. Perhaps I too would prefer to avoid such precipitous drops. But the issue here is that we have the need for uphill flow.

The company is a start-up.

So what if they are picking too-low-hanging fruit initially? As long as their process can in principle scale to a point where genuine reductions are possible. And they do actually enter a legitimate certification process fairly soon. The certification authority will then become responsible for proper accounting.

In the mean time, they are asking for investors' trust without verification. Not ideal, but not unreasonable for a PoC / MVP.

>> We just need to reverse the sign.

Economics looks a lot like entropy. We know of no way to do economically valuable work by burying carbon.

What you say is right. And I realise that heavenlyblue is saying much the same. It seems to be about where to account for the emissions.

I suppose walking in a foreign city is not accounted because agricultural production, transport, hospitality etc. already is accounted elsewhere.

There's surely a need to join up all the accounting up though.

>> It may be several orders of magnitude better, even - but how many exactly?

It's not an easy question to answer. I suspect it would be fun to try. Perhaps more for you than for me. But, aside from the pleasure of working this problem, there remains the other problem. And an answer to your question is almost entirely immaterial to that one.

I think the difference between our approaches is that you are focused on relative amounts - how exactly to account? My concern is with absolutes: a metric fuck-tonne is coming from (effectively) nowhere and going into the atmosphere in almost zero time.

It'll surely be more efficient to account for the future emission at the point of fossil extraction, with special consideration for reliable CCS.

Because humans, trees, living things in general are carbon neutral over a pretty short duration.

The overwhelming concern is carbon that was newly put into the atmosphere from fossil fuel sources comprising millions of years' worth being released all at once (less than 200 years). Carbon that was recently removed from the atmosphere by plants which were subsequently consumed and reintroduced into the atmosphere is a very minor concern.

It's not that your perspective is wrong, just that it is dwarfed by many orders of magnitude, in respect to fossil fuels.

Nice to hear these. Well done.

It's missing the new station that opened before the Olympics: Takanawa Gateway.

>> The third does not (AFAIK) and is on a much higher trajectory.

Depends on one's definition of higher, I guess.

Humans in general have the genetic capacity and are disposed to say this name. How it is actually spelled is just a cultural detail.

Rather than waiting for replies to my comment, like Wolfram, I will just proceed with my own train of thought.

There's arguably scientific value in what he sets out here. So far, our definition of intelligent alien life has just been: we will know it when we see it.

iiuc Wolfram provides a framework with which we can measure and classify "alien" intelligences in their myriad forms. And we can begin that process right here. Working from home.

I rather like the first article. It resonates with my own perspective on the absurdity of some steps in the Drake Equation which seems to assume that there should be some kind of deterministic drive towards exactly our kinds of technology.

If nothing else, for me this resolves the Fermi Paradox in a satisfactory manner. We don't find aliens, because we are not really looking for aliens. Just for a glimpse of ourselves in a cosmic mirror.

I guess that's what can happen when you stare into the Rule 30 abyss for 40 years.

artemisinin against malaria too

Mission sponsor: Ajinomoto

I wonder whether having a better understanding of the mechanism of prion replication might help illuminate possible pathways to the emergence of life.

I am pleased to see your rebuttal. Frankly, I initially thought your indignation was disingenuous. Now, I think we have both read that comment differently.

>> Would they have done the same thing if animal rights protesters, or the Proud Boys, or whoever came and someone thought they were on Amazon property illegally? I think so.

I read it as: take any arbitrary group of people who might organise a protest from any arbitrary political or social position "or whoever". Regardless, Amazon would have reacted the same. There is no implicit comparison to insurrectionists in such a reading.

Your parent was using those two examples to make a logical point. Not by way of of comparison.

You might have got that from the wide political difference between the two examples.

I hope to see the next Mad Max movie as a visceral depiction of a wind, solar, geothermal, BEV, desalination tribe defeating the carbon tribe.

In replay of the recent election in Aus.

May I ask, what proportion of the stuff you did not release on moral grounds were subsequently re-invented in short order?

Thank you for a considered response. I share those feelings.

I just hope the person offering AMA will not be daunted by a good but blunt question from a voice that carries weight around here.

I too would like to imagine whether or not I would release something like this in similar circumstances.

Yet this question seems unfairly loaded. At the least - premature.

Though we can easily imagine it, afaik there is no evidence of any actual abuse to date.

Why make a good point and follow it with a bad joke which: both has a class of victim and does not work as a joke?

Nobody has ever heard of "the French" undertaking such a project. And if it had ever happened, it would most surely have been a particular Academy or the like. Not the 65M people under your careless swipe.

>> Maybe illuminate existing solar arrays during nighttime?

I never thought about this. Is there some orbit where this becomes feasible?

And we've been tripping over good information for hundreds of years.

You are right about power density,

If only we had an absolutely massive fusion reactor that could passively manage its own containment.

It would be so powerful that one such nuclear reactor would produce millions of times more power than we could ever consume.

The reactor could be designed to run indefinitely. No fuel or decommissioning costs incurred.

We could site the reactor at a large enough distance from population centers that we would not need to deal with its waste.

We could decouple the reactor from power generation. Just use safe EM radiation to freely distribute power wherever it would be needed.

The reactor itself, perhaps funded by some benevolent quadrillionaire, having no operating costs would be literally "too cheap to meter".

>> I am staring at about a dozen, stiff, eight-foot high, orange-red penises, carved from living bedrock, and semi-enclosed in an open chamber. A strange carved head (of a man, a demon, a priest, a God?), also hewn from the living rock, gazes at the phallic totems – like a primitivist gargoyle.

[x] Earliest known example

[x] Giant penises

Second Life will one day become a digital archeologist's incredible discovery