voice_of_reason

> My biggest gripe with Python in production is that it isn't statically typed.

With mypy (http://mypy-lang.org/), it could be.

Experiences produced by particular strain can vary wildly even for the same user, so it boils down to experimenting with different strains in different settings and finding out what works for you. Some users report that mixing strains of "haze" family tends to produce strong closed-eye visuals and mild open-eye ones.

If your vision is affected by visual snow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow) or you are prone to have noticeable phosphene images with closed eyes, then it may be sufficient to simply focus on them while being high. The drug will greatly amplify your natural "hallucinations", subjectively up to the level of mild dose of psylocibin or LSD. Of course, taking those classic psychedelics is a more reliable way to produce visuals, but they come with headspace which is quite different (and for some less desirable and comfortable) from weed-induced one.

The same focusing technique can work for monotonic sounds - it's quite amusing to observe how fridge's buzz turns into full-blown symphony :).

While it's generally true that it isn't, some strains may produce quite strong auditory and visual hallucinations for some users.

Your Pavlovially conditioned denigration of quite believable assumption that some entities have huge amount of influence on the economy is even more impressive. Never tired of employing good old "it's a conspiracy theory" conversation stopper, do you?

And the quote war goes on :)

Mr Siegel asserts that dark matter hypothesis is better than any kind of MOND (and, may I add, his opinion is expressed in over-confident and even dogmatic way) because it can "explain" structure of the Universe. However, people in comments doubt that LCDM is particularly good in this area:

"The problem is that dark matter can’t predict the structure of the universe all that well either. Making those dark matter simulations work requires introducing all sorts of epicycles, kludgy mechanisms to make the calculations work out properly. I’m not a big MOND fan, but MOND seems to solve certain problems fairly well, and the galaxy rotation problem is one of them."

https://medium.com/@kaleberg7/the-problem-is-that-dark-matte...

"It might sound like a story from a parallel universe – but it’s true. The Bullet Cluster isn’t the incontrovertible evidence for particle dark matter that you have been told it is. It’s possible to explain the Bullet Cluster with models of modified gravity. And it’s difficult to explain it with particle dark matter"

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-bullet-cluster...

"The goal of Buddhism is not to create an alliance to eventually rule the world and compete with evil Western forces, but to develop a way of life through personal enlightenment that allows a better world to emerge."

Suttas of Pali canon, the most ancient collection of Buddhist texts, are not dedicated to building a better world, though they contain advise on how to achieve happier and more peaceful existence. The goal of Buddha's teaching is an escape, a release from the endless cycle of rebirths, that is achieved through renunciation and non-clinging to the world and the concept of "self".

How come nationalism is evil?

What's evil about me wanting to live with people with whom I share cultural heritage, language, ethics and peculiarities of perception of life? What's wrong with having an independent sovereign government, with having laws and rules tailored specifically to this large tribe I belong to?

I have no desire for my nation to invade other countries or to impose our rules and ways of life on other people. That said, I also will not tolerate foreign interference in my nation's affairs, come it from a single country or international gang, such as UN.

Nations and nationalism are not evil, they are manifestations of different, unique ways of human development, manifestations of the very diversity Western leftists crave for.

"Point to" is not confident enough. Even skepticalscience, the "alarmist"-side site, admits that "While clouds remain an uncertainty, the evidence is building that clouds will probably cause the planet to warm even further".

"A group of researchers from the University of Miami and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography studied cloud data of the northeast Pacific Ocean"

Study from your first link recorded cloud cover data over subset of Earth's atmosphere. It doesn't say anything about whether clouds feedback is positive, or negative. Local data is not very useful evidence, global data would be preferable.

Here is an explanation of what is cloud feedback: increase of temperature has effects on cloud formation. If feedback from changes in cloud formation is positive, it will lead to even more warming. Negative feedback would mean that changed cloud formation actually reduces warming.

It does build on the fact that increased concentration of CO2 reduces EM waves emission (in the parts of frequency spectrum that can be absorbed by CO2) from Earth to space. Earth is presumed to maintain thermodynamic balance (i.e. energy received should be equal to energy lost). To compensate for reduced emission caused by CO2, Earth's surface warms up and restores the balance. This is global warming 101, I believe.

Have you read your links?

"One of the biggest questions in climate sensitivity has been the role of low-level cloud cover. Low-altitude clouds reflect some of the sun's radiation back into the atmosphere, cooling the earth. It's not yet known whether global warming will dissipate clouds, which would effectively speed up the process of climate change, or increase cloud cover, which would slow it down.

But a new study published in the July 24 issue of Science is clearing the haze. A group of researchers from the University of Miami and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography studied cloud data of the northeast Pacific Ocean — both from satellites and from the human eye — over the past 50 years and combined that with climate models. They found that low-level clouds tend to dissipate as the ocean warms — which means a warmer world could well have less cloud cover. "That would create positive feedback, a reinforcing cycle that continues to warm the climate," says Amy Clement, a climate scientist at the University of Miami and the lead author of the Science study."

That's one study that recorded the cloud data for subset of Earth.

Read about clouds feedback issue here, it's very pro-CO2-CAGW site: https://www.skepticalscience.com/clouds-negative-feedback.ht...

Suppose that new discovery in natural climate variability provides IPCC with better models, and these models show that CO2 has only minor influence on global warming and climate overall. "Paradigm shift" would be a good description for this development.

I don't mind AGW at all (it's obvious that human activity influences the climate, and probably the effects of deforestation are as severe as effects from CO2 emissions), but I find CO2-CAGW (i.e. anthropogenic warming caused by CO2 emissions and leading to catastrophic consequences) unconvincing, to a lesser degree due to personal knowledge (uncertainty in clouds feedback, under appreciation of positive effects of higher CO2 concentration etc), and to a higher degree, due to views of Lindzen, Curry, Spencer Dyson, and other scientists.

Yes, Dyson's rhetoric on climate moved a bit towards "alarmist" side, but he still doesn't believe in catastrophic consequences:

"The good news is that the main effect of carbon dioxide … is to make the planet greener, [by] feeding the growth of green plants of all kinds [and] increasing the fertility of farms and fields and forests."

Convincing part stops at cloud feedback for me.

The CAGW builds upon following argument: increased concentration of CO2 reduces the EM radiation's emission in frequencies that CO2 absorbs, ergo the surface temperature should rise in order to keep Earth's thermodynamic balance.

Increased temperature clearly affects the formation of clouds which have both positive and negative effects: they deflect incoming solar radiation, but also deflect surface radiation. The net effect is unclear, unfortunately.

I'm also quite puzzled by apparent lag between CO2 and temperatures in Vostok ice core data. Contrary to CAGW, temperature rises first, and CO2 follows.

My layman understanding is quite limited, of course, that's why eventually I go to the scientists for their expertise. I don't believe that all opponents of CAGW theory are shills; some of them are very respected people: Lindzen, Spencer, etc. My only conclusion is that science is not settled and CAGW is still an unconfirmed hypothesis.

@swampangel: https://www.insidescience.org/news/scientific-consensus-almo...

here you go

There are climate scientists who are proponents of CAGW and who believe in creationism: http://www.christianpost.com/news/climate-change-evangelical...

Does it automatically make CAGW hypothesis wrong? Does it make their skills and knowledge in climate science less valuable?

It is not always true. Imagine the system, where the government is a primary source of grants. There is a possibility that government will prefer funding the scientists whose work supports government's political agenda.

Ok, the minority view was wrong in this particular case. Minority views were also right in some other cases.

"Climate change denialism" - what's this? Is there any scientist out there who thinks that Earth's climate is stable in the long run?

Dyson is a renowned physicist interested in climate science. I believe that his physics/math skills and general intelligence allow him to be quite competent in climate issues.

Lindzen retired only in 2013. I don't see how this makes his opinion about CAGW less valuable, especially given the fact that he was skeptical about CAGW hypothesis for a long time.

"Judith Curry also used to be a scientist and quit her academic job; presumably being a shill pays WAY better." - where's the proof that she is a "shill"?

Roy Spencer is a renowned scientist in my book: "Roy Warren Spencer is a meteorologist, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. He has served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center."

Again, where is the proof that he is oil industry's shill?

Well, I'd need a bit more than "minorities are rarely right" to switch sides.

Why should one trust majority, and not minority, if "minority" people are also qualified and respected (Spencer, Curry)? There were episodes in the history of science, when the majority turned out to be wrong.

Here's one example:

https://www.insidescience.org/news/scientific-consensus-almo...

How is consensus settled, when there are renowned scientists out there who object the CAGW hypothesis? Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Freeman Dyson - are they all bought and paid for by oil industry?

Is something wrong with tox? It is a p2p messenger that works on smartphones.

The first part is sarcastic. It's a shame that you have to resort to "preventive self-denigrating" when voicing valid concerns about the FRS, which is basically a facade for a bunch of crooks who usurped the control over US money supply.

"Before you call me a lunatic"

You're very close to being a lunatic and conspiracy theorist, sir.

"This is somewhat controversial to posit, but I believe the corruption in the financial industry is extraordinarily entrenched because of the Fed."

After TARP and bailouts it's not controversial at all.

Your virtue signaling feat has apparently failed

The majority (if not 100%) of Russia's ruling oligarchy are men, but many laws are indeed biased in favor of women. Woman will likely receive less severe punishment for committing a crime than man does, the mandatory conscription into the military is applied to males only, etc.

Ironic in a sense that "misogynist" Russian society is "better" at "encouraging women into tech" than enlightened Brave New World of the West.

The article is somewhat ironic, in light of the fact that in comparison to Western Europe, Russia is a very sexist society. Gender stereotypes are extremely common here (one can safely express them with no fear of getting a reprimand from local PC officer), gender identity politics is non-existent, and feminism is ridiculed, mocked or considered weird by the majority of people I've met.

PKop, I'm afraid that deprogramming global warming people is a futile effort.

Logarithmic scale of CO2 forcing: http://www.princeton.edu/~lam/documents/LamAug07bs.pdf

Failure of glorified climate models: http://www.thegwpf.com/epic-climate-model-failure/