TheVat

Fair points. I'm not opposed to moving fast and breaking things in dire situations. I posted it to get some idea of how this looks, especially to folks in Europe, and ask if that crack demolition team might have found more effective Russian kneecaps to whack elsewhere. E.g. maybe blow up the rest of the Kerch Strait bridge, which is important to Russia's control of Crimea. Or take out Russian pipelines that carry oil/gas to China. Just saying, maybe keep the CIA in the loop and work with them on finding Achilles Heels. Or train more sharks like this one.... https://www.thedailybeast.com/tourists-watch-russian-man-get-devoured-by-shark-on-egypt-beach

This situation is not quite as you describe. The people who are "not bothering" are likely to be those who have low-end jobs where taking time off work is not an option, in places where polling stations in walking distance have been closed, where voter ID paperwork requirements fall especially hard on those with limited mobility, time, childcare, where some polling stations have standing outside Far Right election "monitors" carrying weapons, etc. Due to time crunch this morning, I am leaving out a number of other obstacles thrown in the path of minority access to voting, but all of this is well documented and witnessed, especially in swing states.

It's published because the Post got a scoop. With pretty solid information from European intelligence service. And the story, if you read it, concerns blowing up a pipeline that was part of the energy supply of several NATO nations....nations that have given billions and will give billions more to Ukraines defense. When Ukraine's operational plans include a kick in the butt to Russia that bounces off Russia and also kicks their allies, it's a good idea to coordinate with said allies. The US may look the other way, but nations like Germany already had a large faction that was questioning some appropriations to Ukraine. So maybe not the best plan. To review, from the article.... Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic...

While I can't say if that's correct or not, it is weird that multiple people in my life who worked with electrical equipment, as well as an instructor in an electronics course way back in undergrad days, all told me quite the opposite of that. Also worth mentioning that the electric chair uses AC, because of its more effective lethality. Is there an EE here who can account for these seeming contradictory ideas about AC v DC? I did find this... https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-3/physiological-effects-electricity/#:~:text=Low-frequency AC produces extended,away from the current's source.

You don't come across as neutral. You seem to be annoyed that black people, after several centuries of everyone constantly identifying them as black, now identify themselves as black and see that as a real ethnicity and culture. Which they want to see thrive. I want to write a book called The White People's Guide to How Black People Should Protest, Ask for Reparations, and Courteously Pretend That Race is Irrelevant and No One Has Reminded Them On a Daily Basis That They are Black. The chapters on how to protest and ask for reparations will consist of blank pages, except for the first one which has one word: NEVER.

A Washington Post writer challenges Mr Bean on his recent critique of EVs in The Guardian. Some good points, and facts clarified, on the overall carbon debt of an EV, the possible merits of hydrogen for personal vehicles, etc. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/06/06/sorry-mr-bean-evs-are-better-choice/ For those facing a paywall, here is a screenshot of the article... https://archive.is/ihdUT For those who prefer soy biodiesel, of course, there may be Bean-friendly vehicles.

Not my position at all. Of course wealth and property cannot be absolutely equalized. Fixing the cycle of poverty is more about giving equal opportunity to those may want to build wealth. Hence my lean towards having reparations be focused on educational funding. In the US, taxation has a dismal track record so far in rectifying blockages on opportunity - corporate control over state and federal lawmakers keeps our taxation system more like "welfare for the rich." You are unfamiliar with US courts, then. Those most mired in the cycle of poverty are those least able to bring an action in a court here. Copious free time and money are required, though there might be some small percentage who were able to get assistance from some charitable legal funding organization. And waiting times for a docket would be measured in years - not much help to a sixteen year old who has to drop out of school because his single mom got sick and can't work and he has to work and look after the family. Finally, I'm not sure where others here stand on this, but I would include "means testing" as part of any sort of reparative payment., to ensure that funds went towards families still struggling to grab a rung of the ladder, not to those who have already climbed it. I would also skip the racial category and make eligible anyone from a group that was disenfranchised. This would include Hispanics and indigenous tribal people. (I live in an area with a lot of indigenous poverty, the Lakota tribe, and all the social ills that go with that, so am aware of what happens to multiple generations when you deprive them of land and liberty and stuff them on a "rez")

In the US the problem is past laws, or past differentials in enforcement, which do generational damage. Families are blocked from building wealth and educational status, which sets in motion a chain of effects such that later generations can't send kids to college, or muster seed money for a business or whatever. Others have hinted at the value of reading the whole thread. I join them.

Washington Post exclusive today.... https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-ukraine-russia/ I was thinking Ukrainians were smarter than that. Maybe they thought Germany and other N. Euros would be okay, the winters there are so mild? Or that no one would ever figure out it was them? Usually, endangering a key ally is not seen as a good idea.

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (better known by its unfortunate acronym, Weee) is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world. Electronic waste amounted to 53.6m tonnes in 2019, a figure growing at about 2% a year. Consider: in 2021, tech companies sold an estimated 1.43bn smartphones, 341m computers, 210m TVs and 548m pairs of headphones. And that’s ignoring the millions of consoles, sex toys, electric scooters and other battery-powered devices we buy every year. Most are not disposed of but live on in perpetuity, tucked away, forgotten, like the old iPhones and headphones in my kitchen drawer, kept “just in case”. As the head of MusicMagpie, a UK secondhand retail and refurbishing service, tells me: “Our biggest competitor is apathy.” Globally, only 17.4% of electronic waste is recycled. Between 7% and 20% is exported, 8% thrown into landfills and incinerators in the global north, and the rest is unaccounted for. Yet Weee is, by weight, among the most precious waste there is. One piece of electronic equipment can contain 60 elements, from copper and aluminium to rarer metals such as cobalt and tantalum, used in everything from motherboards to gyroscopic sensors. A typical iPhone, for example, contains 0.018g of gold, 0.34g of silver, 0.015g of palladium and a tiny fraction of platinum. Multiply by the sheer quantity of devices and the impact is vast: a single recycler in China, GEM, produces more cobalt than the country’s mines each year. The materials in our e-waste – including up to 7% of the world’s gold reserves – are worth £50.9bn a year... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/03/i-spot-brand-new-tvs-here-to-be-shredded-the-truth-about-our-electronic-waste Will we, I wonder, someday be mining landfills? Seems to me that whatever does not get recycled and ends up in trash should at least be separated at the landfill into its own dump area, for possible future excavation.

Haven't seen the deets yet, but this reinforces my belief that seizure of Russian frozen overseas assets (somewhere around 300 billion) and allocating them to Ukrainian reconstruction would be justice. Russia is a thug nation.

How was this determined? Any methodology that claims to achieve such a precise figure deserves close examination. As @geordief has stumbled upon research that challenges orthodox beliefs about the Norwegian reindeer bladder, I feel we need a thread refereed by a cystiszoologist and a micturologist, experts who have monitored what I'm sure is a steady flow of papers. Pee-reviewed papers, of course.

The lower mass of brown dwarves means there's not enough heat from contraction and not enough density to ever reach the conditions needed to sustain hydrogen fusion. IIRC, terrestrial reactors fuse deuterium and tritium, on the basis of their availability and what conditions can be engineered. Lithium could be used, but it's easier to fission lithium and use the tritium product. (and sell the helium, or make a lot of party balloons?)

Questionable. Your payback time is longer, some municipal codes restrict how high you can mount them (they work best at 25 ft. or more, either on a roof peak or a pole), and you do need to live somewhere pretty breezy (like maybe Bonaire, or South Dakota). Where I live is, IIRC, one of the 5 windiest places in US, so I could probably break even on a unit that averaged 5 - 10 kwh/day (enough for our house) in ten to fifteen years. So, seems like wind power is more efficient and cheaper when scaled up and served on a grid. A municipality, for example, can pick an optimal location and put several large turbines there. So far I'm content to spend the money on energy-efficient appliances, windows, lights, etc. No roof climbing for me. 😀

Wind turbines are easier to recycle (and what I would install here, in one of the windiest states). Even the fiberglass blades... https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-makes-wind-turbine-blade-recycling-and-upcycling-reality-support

Batteries are AFAIK less dangerous because the current is DC. It's AC that interferes more with the heart's sinus rhythm. But don't try it with a high amperage battery, like a car battery. I have heard 5 mA is the ceiling for safe shocks. That's a conservative figure, so you could factcheck that, if you have something that's like 10 mA and are unsure. I am uncertain of my figures, because I know a AA battery (which the video guy seems to be using) is around 50 mA (normal load) and does not seem dangerous. But of course if you used all that battery's amp hours to charge a capacitor, it could deliver a nasty shock. So, the moral here is: educate yourself thoroughly on what sort of circuit is being made in that video.

Looks like Florida is now dealing with sargassum problems, with Vibrio bacteria added to the mix. And plastic waste. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/03/sargassum-seaweed-algae-florida-bacteria-vibrio My guess is that if they do have to close beaches in Florida, environmental awareness there will increase considerably. The smell of rotting eggs and flesh-eating bacteria can concentrate the mind wonderfully.

Please use PM for offtopic issues. (I have not been clicking likes or dislikes here, am just asking for more topic relevant posts)

My analogy was simpler. Generations of discrimination make it as if people are starting 50 feet behind everyone else. It was a metaphor. Moving the B group ahead, though it seems like favoritism, just gets them to the starting line along with everyone else. Reparations, e.g. like the one proposed to give families a college fund for their children, don't give the children a special advantage once they're in college, they simply get them TO college in the first place. Will some middle class black families get money they don't need? Quite possible, and so what? I have a good IRA and don't really need Social Security checks, but I receive them anyway. I recognize that many older folks really depend on SS payments, and am glad no one's dismantled the system because it distributes benefits too generally. And I can (as black middle class families may do) use my SS payments to help my children build wealth, say pursue homeowning dreams much harder to reach for their generation.

Indeed. I came up with this analogy, to clarify the situation for those who think a special assistance is racist: Imagine a footrace (on a straight linear track) where contestants are lined up on a starting line except for one group, group "B," that is lined up fifty feet behind everyone else. This has been a long tradition in this footrace. Spectators, noticing this inequity in the starting line system, call out for the B group to be allowed to move up to the general starting line with eveyone else. However, the racing commissioner says no, because that would be giving special attention to the B group. And, the commissioner adds, it's perfectly obvious that the B group are able-bodied and therefore should not receive any special favors. And, he further notes, there have been several outstanding B runners who have won in the past, so clearly the different starting line is not a problem. The crowd grows angry. After some years of struggle, the commissioner and his cronies are finally tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. And everyone moves to the starting line, a nice straight line perpendicular to the track.

Some think of cicadas in this regard, but AFAIK their periodicity being primes is just a coincidence. If you posted a thread about Fibonacci numbers and nature, then we would have something to talk about.