zizee

Especially in the west?

You might like this video from Skylab: https://youtu.be/S_p7LiyOUx0?si=J_JqunYl2OkeROa7

(23 second mark)

Monkey wrench anyone?

> Fossil production and consumption is still increasing.

Are you talking worldwide? Or in the US? Because in the US and many other advanced economies total energy consumption is still increasing, but the total amount from fossil fuels is shrinking.

At a certain point it is going to no longer make economic sense to continue to build new fossil fuel based energy production (it already doesn't if externalities are accounted for).

It is a big hill to climb, but as the saying goes, "people vote with their wallets". Economic forces are pretty hard to resist.

I'm a nuclear proponent, but similar arguments can be made for why we cannot solve our woes with nuclear. I'd also suggest scaling battery production is going to be less challenging than scaling nuclear production.

The artefacts/artworks that people would like to commercialize are hot properties that allow their caretaker institutions to draw crowds and make $$. If anything, businesses that use images of David are helping by providing free advertising and keeping these works from fading from the public consciousness.

Sand has the added benefit over graphite of being nonflammable.

I looked at your marketing. Two bits of feedback:

1. I don't understand how these colour gradients are meant to help. Explain it;

2. Formatting on mobile (Firefox android) is not great.

Will they extend this to Instagram? Until then (and even after) I'd be suspicious of their intentions. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu...

It would be useful to categorise "social media" into "publish to strangers" vs "interact with individuals in private". Apparently these are both social media, but they are very different use-cases.

Most of the apps you mentioned are focussed on that second category, whereas (I believe) the GP was talking about the first category.

That's a pretty negative perspective. 87% of electricity in NZ is from renewable sources. NZ is a world leader, and should be lauded.

What is the basis for your perspective that NZ is failing to "make it work"? NZ is so far ahead of Germany it's not funny (Austria is similar to NZ with 87%).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_New_Zeal...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany

> You can't escape personal due diligence and "it was top ranked!" has never been that.

Apple continually makes claims that the closed ecosystem is essential to the safety of their customers, that they have a robust review process, and that their customers choose them because of the safety they provide. Apple should stop repeating these claims if they are not, in fact, reliable protection against scams.

The idea that "marsers" think mars is a liftraft to escape too from a dying earth is, as far as I can tell, an lie spread to discredit people interested in in mars colonization.

No one believes that mars is going to be a better/easier place to live than earth. It's idiotic, and only spouted by people that don't like the idea of Mars, and said to make "marsers" look like idiots in association.

The original post made it sound unusual that civilians are dying in such high numbers. It is unfortunately not unusual that civilians die at higher numbers than combatants during war, the opposite is often true.

The article also gives examples of many major wars, with the majority of examples have numbers of civilians killed usually greater than combatants.

So, as horrific as this war has been, I don't think the claim that this is "one of the the deadliest wars for civilians in general" holds up.

Are you saying this war has a higher civilian casualty ratio that other wars? Sadly history shows that civilians have been casualties of war at high rates compared to combatants.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio

The Northern Irish population voted to stay in the European union, with 55.8% voting to stay. Could this trigger a vote for leaving the UK, and uniting with Ireland?

https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/06/northern-ireland-vote-brexit-...

The point is possibly that there are rules that prevent organisations started as non-profit to transition to for-profit.

Note: I am just spitballing. I cannot speak definitely about the law or what the GP was saying.

Whilst I don't agree with the article, you're ignoring that these epic machines you talk of are the product of a much larger population. These megamachines wouldn't exist, or at least not all the types of machines, if not for us having billions of people on the planet.

What's the point of doing anything?

People have said the same of many great endeavours, and it is often hard to predict all everything that results from tackling big challenges.

I suspect that there is likely nothing anyone could suggest would succeed in shifting you position.

This says it's possible: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/8016/is-a-railgun-...

Note: I cannot vouch for its correctness.

Why would the rate of improvement follow your imagined formula?

If people are worried about a runaway effect, why would you think you can dismiss their concerns by constructing a very specific scaling function that will not result in a runaway effect?

If I am understanding correctly, did you consider the option of calculating weights in the client?

> This burst of activity represents a frustrated thought that “it is time to become impatient with the old view”, as Ball says. Genetics alone cannot help us to understand and treat many of the diseases that cause the biggest health-care burdens, such as schizophrenia, cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

Does anyone actually subscribe to this "old view"? Surely the majority of scientists, medical professionals, and laymen alike understand environmental factors play a huge part in this. Why make a call to action to address a imagined state of affairs?

The lack of information, which in turn affects consumer behaviour. Information is important to a well functioning market. Excellent point, and providing more info is often to the detriment of many sellers/producers.

That excellent point aside, I did want to say that international shipping is a much smaller contribute to CO2 emissions than road freight, so a simple toggle is probably not going to cut the mustard, and goods from China are not necessarily that much worse for the environment than goods transported from one side of the US to another.

The biggest problem with most goods produced these days is the disposable nature of them.

Thanks, but that does not answer my question.

I guess I want to hear predictions of when fossil fuel usage will peak, and over what time period will it be reduced by 20, 30, 50%.

Given these trends, what is the predicted year that we'd expect the last fossil fuel burning power plant to be greenlit for construction in China, India, and the US?

Follow-up: At what point is continued operation of existing coal become uneconomical (to simplify the question assume decent solar generation locations are available/ grid connected nearby).

Thanks! No need to apologise, it's fun to run the numbers.

On top of maintenance costs we probably need to account for finance costs (5% interest rate means repayments of 100mil over 10 years) and the fact batteries don't tend to ever get charged/discharged 100%.

Presumably if you built this you'd want a bit of return on your investment, so you'd have to charge more on top.

TBC: I think these batteries make economic sense (even more so if coal/petrol had externalities baked into their costs), but we don't want to oversell things

Can you explain your logic a bit more? I'm struggling to understand how you calculated the $0.074, and what you are saying it represents.

Edit: I suspect your calculations just represent depreciation over the batteries lifetime, which is only one of the costs involved.

People have suggested that the X32 was not chosen by the air force (instead of the chosen F22) because of ugliness.

Note: I don't know if this is true or not, and I don't know the performance capabilities of each aircraft.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/meet-2-stealth-fighte...