TheVat

I meant "defuse" in the sense that Garland himself stated, that his DOJ would be more transparent on details of the investigation partly because of the welter of wild conjectures and claims of the DOJ conducting a political hit on TFG. DOJ would not normally have released the affidavit or made an open filing on the GJ subpoena, hiding of documents, etc. These are all extraordinary moves to help nip conspiracy theories in the bud, AFAICT. I hope they work.

My sympathy to the FBI, having to release (through filings) details of an ongoing investigation. They have no choice if they want to defuse some of the Far Right conspiracy theories and violence promotion that's oozing through social media. But criminal investigations tend to suffer when so much has to be shared at this stage. IIRC, one of the redacted witness names on the affidavit released last week has already been deduced, because of a little too much transparency. That's dangerous for a witness, and hurts the investigation if other future witnesses are then scared off or less forthcoming.

How would an AI determine what is humane?? There is a reason we hand such questions (or try to) to ethicists, social workers, judges, psychologists, anthropologists....and not machines that have zero clue what it is to be a human uprooted by catastrophe.

I did not say ALL water diversions are doomed to fail - I was basing the comment on the many catastrophic failures (especially riparian containment) in the US, where specs were overly optimistic about nature's good behavior. My opinion is mainly informed by observation and living, myself, through two floods. America has had an intense obsession with progress and rapid development that often leads to political machinery that ignores warnings from cooler heads. Many water experts here are currently making the case for moving some communities to higher ground as the less costly option.

@zapatos I love "Jessica." Must have heard this a thousand times and never tired of it. Thanks for one thousand and one! Wish Duane had lived to join that session.

Yes! When I hear that phrase I think of that golden piano era when ticklers like Fats Waller, Zez Confrey and Jelly Roll Morton were wowing audiences with their superhuman fingerwork. And most keyboards were composed of actual ivory.

Yeah, Am in P might be an acquired taste for some. I connected with it (and all things Gershwin) at an early age, then learned to play some of the Daly transcription when I studied piano. (It's brutal and I can only get through a few passages) I like both Brubeck and Class Gas, and play them on the piano from time to time. Both Take 5 and Blue Rondo are within my playing ability, thanks to the fact that Brubeck when young broke his hands in a car accident and thereafter opted for chordings that favor stiff hands. A lot of his transcriptions are in the public domain, so I can just download pdf files for free.

Boaz Sharon gives one of the best renditions of Gershwin's symphonic masterpiece. Somehow, on a piano, he captures and clarifies every instrumental voice in the piece. How have only 30K viewed this??

I suspect the most viable solutions will involve conservation of water and evaporative loss reduction. Xeriscaping, drip irrigation, cover materials on reservoirs, etc. I doubt "shipping" water up grades will ever be economic, unless it's Perrier. Similarly, floodwater has a way of defeating large-scale engineering. Discouraging development of lowlands and subsidizing the move of populations to higher ground will probably be more economic than endless levee and seawall building. Too many people, through no fault of their own, live on lowlands that should have stayed as marsh and wetlands purifying water naturally and dampening storm surges. Good posts, very thought provoking, sorry to be late to the party.

One should not ignore the role of Big Pharma in promoting the chemical imbalance paradigm. As @Peterkin noted, the thread might work better without dead philosophers and multiple issues - perhaps just focus on the chemical imbalance paradigm and what clinical data is actually out there. It's so easy to cherrypick data in arguing either for or against. And blaming capitalism and its political life support systems, though an easy target, is simplistic.

You're writing a thesis concerning the recipe details of making TNT? My guess is that specific procedural details on making an explosive would violate site rules. If you had trouble locating the forum rules, you are not the first. When I first joined, I looked in announcements but only found piecemeal posts amending said rules.

Much overlap with others. Mig's list very similar to mine in HS, also heavy doses of sci-fi (IIRC, we read Childhood's End, by ACC, for a HS class. Also Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.) Nice to see someone found Borges at an early age - The Garden of Forking Paths, or anything from his Ficciones, would be an ambitious read for many high schools. I remember Tlon, Uqbar completely blowing my mind. I am assuming Peterkin's partaking of Lady Chatterly was extracurricular. If it wasn't then clearly I went to the wrong schools! Still have yet to read The Centaur, though have read a fair range pf Updike. Another Not Typical High School Fare. I liked Nevil Shute's OTB more than the film adaptation - parts of the film seemed a little contrived or didn't quite flesh out characters.

Leaching is a problem either method, and heat can aid the break-off of plastic nanoparticles into the food as well as leaching pthalates, PFAS, BPA, dioxins, etc. Best to transfer food from plastic packaging to a glass bowl, then heat. In fact, given that more thermal energy is transfered through the plastic, with your boiling method, it might be slightly worse. With microwaves, just water molecules inside the food mass are being agitated, so the plastic container is only warmed peripherally.

More affordable magnets and tech advances have the fusion community hoping for (economically viable) net positive output by the 2030s. Here's an overview of what's going on in fusion research, from the Washington Post (non paywall version is the second link): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/26/nuclear-fusion-technology-climate-change/ https://archive.ph/3L8wC

Wondering if there's some translation problem here. The OP is talking about houseflies - small flying insects.

Sealed bearings. Cleaning is sufficient.

There are many minor conditions that are almost inescapable. Almost everyone over 65 starts to have some lactose intolerance, even if they didn't when younger. Almost everyone has some drop in natural melatonin production, which means needing to take more care to get enough sleep. Some loss of muscle mass is almost inevitable, which affects strength and resistance to cold. The immune system declines (with considerable variation between individuals) and recovery from illness is slower. Joints wear out, no matter how robust your overall health, and will need some extra attention. Other changes are common in western societies but less common in low tech pastoral societies where people do physical labor throughout life and eat less processed food and breathe less nasty city air, e.g. high blood pressure, acid reflux disease, diabetes, constipation, atherosclerosis, etc. So...walk everywhere, use your muscles, do chores minimizing machinery assist, eat lots of plants, pour on the olive oil and fish oil, do core strength exercises, and try to avoid biking behind a bus.

I also wouldn't rule out Jared as possible Mar A Mole. Emphatic denials notwithstanding. His remarkable two billion dollar check from the Saudis suggests he could have been in fairly deep and needed to provide something big to flip on TFG. The Guardian, earlier this month, reported that multiple Trump aides believe it was a family member who tipped off federal law enforcement about the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. And Michael Cohen sees Jared as a possible mole.

I think your big worry, in terms of survival, would be alveolar rupture from the sudden depressurization. Also, strokes and other tissue damage from dissolved gases coming out of solution. IIRC, they tried some monumentally cruel experiments with dogs and found they could recover if the vacuum exposure was only a couple minutes. After that, there was often too much damage to lungs and other tissues to recover.

I find Barbour useful, even when disagreeing with him, on what time could possibly be other than a perceived rate of change that's essentially an illusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour Warning: May contain traces of nut.

There are people who did not watch Game of Thrones and will not get that meme at all. The pop culture here in the USA is so besotted with fantasy these days, that there seems to be a common assumption that GoT is the watercooler show which everyone will get references to. Anyway, just a heads up: there are millions of us who aren't into the genre and won't know who Reek is unless we go a-Googling. Which I did. (GoT puts me in the same space I was in for years with Lord of the Rings - watching a few video clips, checking a wiki now and then, so that I'm not completely clueless when someone fires off a LotR reference, and of course fending off looks of shock, followed by either disgust or pity, when I mention that I've never read Tolkien or watched Peter Jackson's adaptations) (my daughter finds it a source of amusement, on the order of "My dad lives in the deep woods in a shanty, where he speaks in tongues all day and lives on moss and crickets.")

This kind of odds setting will probably be more informed in 2024. I couldn't see the source in the OP. What is it? Will be interesting to see if smart seasoned politicians who can pull in moderates, like Amy Klobuchar, will have another go at it. Or maybe a vigorous Progressive with charisma like Cory Booker. I also wouldn't rule out Gretchen Whitmer - in the current climate, a Midwest governor might get more traction than, say, Gavin Newsom (do Democrats want a former mayor of San Francisco when they try to woo Independents?). Biden has eighteen months to awaken to the realities of the aging process that are pretty evident to others. I don't want him to run because I don't like him, but because I do like him. He's earned a rest. I believe that, in his heart, Joe understands how vital younger blood is for the Democratic party, and will eventually throw his support that way.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/22/alexander-dugin-daughter-car-bombing-distrust-official-narrative/ First, Dugin is far less important than some people are suggesting. He’s not “Putin’s brain.” There is no evidence that Dugin has ever met Putin in person, much less offered him regular advice, and I am yet to be convinced that the Russian president spends his leisure time poring over turgid political tracts. Putin didn’t have to read Dugin’s writings to come up with plans to annex Crimea or undermine Ukrainian statehood — both of those ideas have long been widespread among certain members of the Russian elite. Putin has his own brain. Second, killing Dugin will likely have zero direct effect on Russia’s war against Ukraine. Staging such an attack in Putin’s backyard might boost Ukrainian morale a bit. But that seems like a lot of risk for the sake of eliminating someone who plays no actual role in the conduct of the war. Dugin, it is worth noting, has no government position; his only function is as a propagandist — and Russia is oversupplied with those. (Both Dugin and his daughter have indulged in genocidal rhetoric against Ukrainians — which, sadly, places them solidly in the mainstream of Russian public discourse today.) And that brings us to the most important point — that we shouldn’t take Kremlin statements at face value. Russia is a paranoid dictatorship prosecuting one of the most brazen acts of international aggression in decades. In 2014, Putin wholeheartedly denied that his troops were seizing control of Crimea until the operation was finished; today, six months after the start of the invasion, it remains a crime to state the truth that Russia is waging “war” in Ukraine. Dictatorships, by their nature, do not deal in truths. Any information released by the Russian authorities should be treated less as a description of reality than as a political tool. https://archive.ph/XIeh4 Non-PW version of above

I came from a real tough neighborhood. I bought a waterbed and found a guy at the bottom of it.

The ambassador to Kazakhstan? Wow, they really had to do some digging there. Maybe they should get a sound-bite from Borat, too. Re the Gingrich/Tea/Trump devolution, the one positive about many US voters is that they are fickle. Dangle a different set of shiny car keys in front of them and Trump will be forgotten. And, as Zapatos noted, the eternal battle will go on, driven always by the tension between oligarchy and democracy. And the dismal trend of running on "owning" some opposition rather than real problem solving with innovative policy.