TheVat

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Village designates that critical size at which an idiot is acquired and formally installed.

Please post a plain English abstract of your paper. And maybe some touchstones, as how your ideas relate to Carnap or Russell or other modern thinkers in the field.

I once encountered a porcupine that had a pin number.

AFAIK, it's all common sense stuff with PV panels - optimal angle to catch rays as perpendicular as possible, above tree shade if possible. Economically, there are cost/benefit calculations as to having a tracking or fixed mount, or whether it's on a rooftop or the ground. In cities with standard lots and many house and tree shadows, the roof is usually the only viable option. This makes a tracking mount more difficult, and there's the challenge of affixing to the roof and having all supporting members be adequately flashed and sealed so rain doesn't leak in. You also have to pay more for high roofs, where workers have to use safety harnesses and things generally take longer. And roof installations are more trouble to clean (in arid climates, they need regular cleaning, as you will lose a fair amount of watts to dust accumulation. You can get an idea of your cleaning issues by leaving a car stationary for a week or two and see how your windshield (windscreen) looks.

The less professional the army, the more likely to flee in disarray, and to abandon their weapons. (Or become cannon fodder) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/20/russia-recruits-inmates-ukraine-war-wagner-prigozhin The Kremlin’s reliance on unorthodox methods to keep the fighting going in Ukraine is worrying for Russia, according to Lee. “Russia no longer has a professional army in the traditional sense. It is now made up of some professional units, mixed with paid short-term contract soldiers, mercenaries and now, apparently, prisoners. “Armies are effective when there is clear hierarchy and cohesion,” Lee added. “I can’t even begin to imagine what disciplinary problems prisoners will bring.” On Tuesday, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, himself behind bars, tweeted that Russian prisons were full of people with “big problems with discipline and even bigger problems with alcohol and substances”. He said: “What could such an army even accomplish in combat?”

@MigL If you join a website and post the above, then you are going to come across as bigoted in your attitude. Note he could have added "some" before atheists, and then offered specific examples to support the last sentence. My guess is that he didn't back up that remark because it's a straw man. If you post bigoted comments, then where there is free discourse (which you clearly prize, as I do) people will call you on it and you don't get a special safe space where your bigotry is tiptoed around. Then Derp went onto assert: Did he post polls or surveys to support this? Did he offer any quotes from atheist arguments to support his contention of "context negative for accuracy"(whatever that means)? So, another vague attack, without any actual consideration of an atheist perspective, or glimmer of intellectual honesty.

I didn't take a stance. Out of genuine interest, and my usual appetite for scientific evidence, I requested (per this website's SOP) some citation to support your personal anecdotal experience. The topic of the thread is depression, so are you saying that fasting can help depression? Once again, I ask a straightforward question. As for your insults and "you're following me" comment, it sounds like the fasting didn't do much for your paranoid ideation. I'm not following you, I am continuing to follow this thread, which I posted in a few months ago. (Aggressive Aggressive Addendum: fuckhead)

Relationship Tip : do not attempt to seduce your spouse or SO with the "please help me ward off prostate cancer" gambit.

Could you provide some sort of citation, hopefully from peer reviewed research, for your assertions? While I can well imagine the therapeutic potential of psychoactive drugs like psilocybin, I think the water fasting claim is more "out there" and needs some factual backup. Also note the thread topic is treatments which do not involve medication -- dosing with a psychoactive compound would fall under the rubric of medication, seems to me.

A good thread to revisit, with some long and thoughtful postings from Ken. I saw this today, about "nuclear bros," who inhabit the web and seem to get pigeonholed as millennial males, perhaps erroneously. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/nuclear-bros-power-activists/ (Will post screenshot link at bottom for those with paywall woes) As the article makes clear, there are a variety of pro-nuke positions, united by their estimations that the depredations of fossil fuel use outweigh the potential calamities of nuke plant accidents. I remain skeptical of the implied either/or of such calculations when we have a gargantuan nuclear fusion reactor pouring 173,000 terawatts on us continuously, and driving air currents easily harvested with a 19th century technology. I think it's a fair point that the more moderates make, that responsible stewards of the atom like France, Germany, California should keep their existing units running a while longer until we can ramp up renewables and battery storage. https://archive.ph/2022.09.30-155236/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/nuclear-bros-power-activists/ Or https://archive.ph/sZBww

Stop me before I post again!

And what does the recycling of organic material through an ecosystem have to with a metaphysical theory of spiritual passage? Aside from it being an interesting metaphor, the cycling of carbon and assorted minerals doesn't point to the existence of some ethereal plane of being. The mere fact that some of my phosphorus (if my ashes are scattered) will be absorbed by plant roots and eaten by a grazing herbivore and incorporated into its skeleton doesn't mean my consciousness will persist into some other earthly life. The Eastern theory of transmigration of souls is predicated on a sophisticated system of religious moral laws and related duties ("dharma") and a long series of lives in which many lessons are learned and past actions accounted for (karmic debt). It's a great deal more than "recycling" some "mystical energy force" through the breakdown of corpses. The only science based approach I know of is the investigation of so-called past life memories in order to test a pretty extraordinary claim. To date, those investigations have been beset with procedural errors and inability to rule out other explanations of a more prosaic nature. ETA: and now I see this is the thread with the reincarnation chat we had in February, with Rama denouncing a Sugar Daddy god in the sky and Eternal Rest Home afterlives. Ha, fun times.

Ockham's razor is your friend.

If you heard me make a statement about some other social group, ethnicity, or creed beginning with "the problem with [members of this group]..." and continue on with a blanket statement that betrayed ignorance of said group, you might well conclude that I was a flaming bigot. No need to waste any more time with your ill-informed prattle.

Our inner twelve year olds are thriving today! A great pair of knockers... (Credit: Mel Brooks)

I'll see your boobies and raise you a great tit.

C - of course. Solar panels generate electricity which can crack water to make H. Plenty of sunshine, hardly ever clouds over. Lunar water ice was found at the poles, back in the 70s. B - Probably dozens of alternative lubricants? Boron hydride, silicone, lithium, etc. As the wise frog said, a minor concern. Sealed bearings, you don't need vast quantities. I think space programs have been thinking beyond oil for many decades now. Count me out of any colony where your life depends on a thin sheet of material floating at a Lagrange point. What could possibly go wrong, eh? Ok, maybe the mylar shield is a temp. Cool the ball, sequester all the frozen CO2 ice, then slowly bring the heat up again (scrolling in the shield) as you generate atmosphere that permits maximum IR radiation back to space. Might get a sustainable terrestrial type clime at the higher latitudes?

Maybe we should concentrate efforts on treating fellow humans and sentient animals better. Have not seen clear evidence that insects are neurologically developed enough to consciously suffer. Not saying such evidence couldn't emerge in further research, or perhaps that consciousness arises in large colonies - a "hive mind," maybe. Perhaps the best argument for humane lab practices is that it furthers the habit of compassion in humans?

Plus one to that. Godwin himself has pointed out that sometimes parallels to Nazi Germany are called for in a discussion. Godwin's Law is observational not proscriptive. My question (why blow things up, etc) was more directed at Stringy asking if the US could have done the deed - and how I didn't see much motive for us. (I should have copy-paste his comment in my post) I agree Russia has possible motives.

So what do you want to discuss? BTW, you know that lactose free milk has been widely available for decades, right? Pretty much solved the problem back in the 70s.

Seems unlikely. Biden and SoS Blinken favor economic crowbars more than military ones when it comes to isolating Russia from energy markets. (And there's that whole WWIII thing, aways an undercurrent) Why blow things up (and possibly leave fingerprints) when Europe is buckling in for austerity and gas boycotts already? And sabotage traced to US or NATO would just feed Moscow's whole grievance narrative, risking even more entrenchment in their aggression. Here's some further coverage, which includes some prelim scientific analysis of methane release, size of explosions, and of course the usual political bristling. I posted a screenshot, too, in case you hit a paywall. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/nord-stream-gas-leak-methane-russia/ Screenshot -- https://archive.ph/0fUQ4

No doubt. I was just raising the point as part of wondering about the cost/benefit for a Russian actor to do such a thing, not as someone remotely near an expert on how big a project this kind of pipeline repair is. Maybe it does just involve removing a short length of pipe. In other news, the sham of annexation proceeds.... Lipavsky described the pro-Russia referendums as “theater play" and insisted the regions remain "Ukrainian territory.” Armed Russian troops at went door-to-door with election officials to collect ballots in five days of voting that produced suspiciously high margins in favor of joining Russia. Ukrainian officials said the military escorts also took down the names of residents who voted against annexation. Moscow-installed administrations in the four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine claimed Tuesday night that 93% of the ballots cast in the Zaporizhzhia region supported annexation, as did 87% in Kherson, 98% in Luhansk and 99% in Donetsk. “Under threats and sometimes even (at) gunpoint, people are being taken out of their homes or workplaces to vote in glass ballot boxes,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at a conference in Berlin. “This is the opposite of free and fair elections,” Baerbock said. “And this is the opposite of peace. It’s dictated peace. As long as this Russian diktat prevails in the occupied territories of Ukraine, no citizen is safe. No citizen is free.” (from ABC news, this morning) https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/kremlin-regions-ukraine-folded-russia-friday-90683980

Z, These were explosions registered around N Europe on seismographs. I would speculate that they blew the bejesus out of those pipes, as the sudden drop in pressure also points to, and repair will be a largish deal. (With small workaday leaks, IIUTC, you can keep the pipeline pressurized and keep seawater out)

Great idea, Steve Anderson!! Request now!! I personally favor the University of Uttar Pradesh! Hurry!