TheVat

https://www.newsweek.com/nuclear-war-bombs-us-safest-place-protection-1750293 (Text of article below video) I find some of the scenarios of survival presented in this article bordering on absurd. And the notion of "rebuilding." Rebuild what, exactly? With what food supply? Newsweek does its readers a disservice, giving a false idea that a few places blessed by distance from strategic targets, favorable wind patterns and rain shadows, and what? A decade of canned goods for all? An amazing supply of engineers, educators, physicians, stored gas and diesel and heavy equipment? will somehow rebuild civilization as we know it. My favorite expert quote in the article was: Days? Really? I rarely use emojis, but....😂 It gets better here: Sure, pal, heading to Home Depot as soon as the mushroom cloud s appear! Oh, wait, the intense multiple EMPs fried my car's electronics. More handy tips.... Aside from the idiocy of thinking you can drill a deep aquifer well after the fact, someone needs to point out that that east-of-Rockies rain shadow zone (where I live) is bristling with missile silos and heavy bomber bases and other attractive targets to an adversary in a nuke exchange. And lots and lots of loose dry surface soil...

I agree that many postmodern thinkers were engaging in a useful interrogation of science and its methods and choices of study. I was directing my earlier remark at the branch of postmodernism that construed science as a politically driven "metanarrative" that has too sweeping an explanation of how reality works. Thinkers like Lyotard (or Foucault, who rejected any chance of fundamental principles to discover truth) went too far, imo, in their characterization of knowledge as intrinsically political and ruled by a group in power. He and others seemed to say that science simply could get no foothold in objective truth and all its aims and findings should be subject to radical skepticism. Attacking the complacency of modernism doesn't have to mean dismissing the quest for solid models of objective reality. And, for sure, I think the PM scrutiny of areas like race or intelligence (IQ, e.g.) or how minds work, or realist theories of quantum physics, is incredibly valuable. Your example is one where PM critique was sorely needed. And yes, possibly this derails the topic, but what fun! 😀

First, down pillows are made to have the case removed and washed. The outer case, and liner, absorb hair and face oil keeping the inner pillow clean. The inner pillow is not meant to be washed. Down pillows need to be plumped, only. Just pat them with hands when rising in the morning and spin them in the air a couple times. You may be okay because the wet interior was in constant motion, which would make mold growth less likely. If it had just sat wet for a couple days, it would be a different story. Please save yourself a gigantic electric bill (and huge waste), and just wash the case next time.

My god that time lapse is eerie. I remember the final test ban was in 1996, but I guess not everyone signed onto that one.

Am going to try and read this thread this weekend, not only to better understand the scientific attitudes towards realism, but also how someone broke Joigus. JK. Years ago, I had this notion that entanglement was analogous too two distant astronauts tethered together. When the tether breaks in the middle, there is no FTL signal, but their state changes instantly to "untethered." Nothing spooky. Just a change such that, if we measure either astronaut for tetheredness, we will find them unmoored. Yeah. That was when I realized it was a mistake to map RW situations onto QM.

Defining such words nowadays points to one of the core challenges postmodernism has made to the classic Enlightenment idea that we can determine objective truths and arrive at principles that may be universally applied. IOW, such terms as "success" underscore the subjectivity of their use, and their critical dependence on cultural norms. If we use it in the larger sense, i.e. success in life, then it becomes clear there is no epistemological height that would allow us to determine what is best - no objective set of facts is going to sort out evidence and decide for all which life is best. Is the monk more successful than the wealthy merchant, is the physician more successful than the mechanic? Depends on all these cultural, or maybe subcultural, sets of priorities and valuations. I don't think postmodernism was correct in its attacks on science, but I think it did take Enlightenment assumptions of universal ethical and moral principles and ask hard questions, especially when one particular society could have dominance and global power and sort of erase other cultures. That's not a good sort of success.

My seventh grade math teacher could do that, too. Very effective at keeping order.

I have questions. If you use holy water and soap to wash your dishes, does that make the dishes holy? Or just cleaner? How does holy and unholy balance? Is there a way to quantify them when, say, I eat pork (unholy to Jews and Muslims) off the plates washed with holy water? Could the holy and unholy cancel out in that situation? If I drink holy water which then hydrates my stool, does that produce holy s--t? Or was drinking the water a bad action which taints my innards? Also concerned about sources like the Jordan River - if someone dumps garbage or effluent in the river, does God get irate? Will he punish the person? Were is the scientific proof you mention that Zamzam Water decreases fatigue? This needs a citation.

True. Putin's ego is such that I'm not entirely confident that he will be able to grasp the magnitude of all his losses that you describe. Like Trump, he may prove to have that pathological knack for declaring a win where none exists, and boast that the retaking of Ukrainian soil is a glorious step towards reunification of the old Empire. I'm not sure he would even be that concerned about retaking irradiated soil, though I still haven't seen evidence that he's quite that demented. One of the tragedies of Hiroshima, beyond the horrendous deaths, is that its geography was such that a lot of the radioactive plume blew out to sea and vanished. I've always had this nagging fear that some ruthless leader will see that as a way to think, "Hey, it's not that hard to contain the effects of a nuclear blast, it will just be a few square miles, we'll be fine...." and block off any awareness that detonations in the middle of a large landmass have very different consequences. I give credit to Putin for not suffering from kind of this delusion, but as INow and others noted, the NEXT guy could be better at blocking off inconvenient facts in their quest for glory.

The quote btw is not "money is the root of all evil" but rather "the love of money is the root of all evil." The finding that experiences contributed more to reported happiness than does material stuff seems generally true, though the number of Americans who cannot penetrate to that truth is sadly pretty high. An American named Henry David Thoreau pointed out that you don't own things but rather things own you. When you cease being so owned it's quite pleasant and freeing.

I'm guessing if we worked on the grammar of that sentence, we'd find you meant that anyone annihilated in a nuclear attack would get to meet God. Assuming we accept the conjecture of a personal god who created everything (and all the pretzel logic that goes with), and engages in chats with all the freshly dead, then it's not really an honor is it? If everyone gets something, then that something is not really an honor, since "honor" in this sense implies a special recognition accorded only to a select few.

A lot of call for trumpets at funerals? I'm intrigued.

Might be helpful in this chat to distinguish between work and chores. I doubt anyone here disagrees that school is the important job for ten year olds or would suggest we have them join the labor force in fields or factories. Chores are valuable for reasons addressed by several here. Pete set out the protocol for extra funds for extra work, and setting standards of quality, in useful detail. The OP asks an unanswerable question: what is a typical amount. Even knowing the context of nation, specific locale, socioeconomic condition, attitudes towards consumerism, prevailing fashions, etc, it would be hard to define "typical."

I started helping in and around the house around age 8 or so. Nothing but good came of it. My parents gave me a good home, I was happy and proud to help them out. When you work for your family, you are invested in a basic way, you are connected, you develop physical and mental competence in various areas that serve you well later. I'm not saying a ten year old must work (school is work, too, after all, and sometimes that's a lot), just that I think it can have value. Don't even get me started on a ten year old with a smartphone. I don't want to do the hod carrying of all the citations I would have to go find that point to what's wrong with that.

Per your bolded quote - wouldn't that suggest that belt-tightening and forgoing trivial pleasures would be a better approach to budget management than going into debt? Debt burdens are one of the principal economic miseries of many poor people in the United States, and elsewhere. Perhaps you would do better to offer free handbooks on how to cook healthy low-cost meals, take best advantage of mass transit and bicycle transport, conserve on utilities, cut hair at home, etc. If you look at all these financial workshops that are offered by pundits like Warren Buffett, they invariably stress the importance of avoiding debt.

Beat me to it. One way to reduce the alarming number of young adults in the world with a false sense of entitlement who think the world owes them something is to start them young contributing useful work to the family. Some of that work is unpaid, because it helps the household which is already giving them free room, board, medical care, and hopefully a whole lotta love. But you can have optional tasks that a ten year old would be able to do, if they want some discretionary spending money. Wash/vac a car, help a parent with some house painting, sweep the walks and driveway, shovel snow, wash some windows (where accessible to that age), etc. In an apartment setting, there are fewer options, but there might be other options like neighboring tenants who could use a little help especially if elderly.

He's doing the Walk of Life, still, at 79. Perhaps still Twisting by the Pool. Always a thought provoking columnist, sorry to say I have not been reading him in recent years. Thanks to Peterkin for the link. I question "sub kiloton range" tac nukes, though. Most of what I've gleaned is they are largely in the 1-20 kiloton range, and if you were going for a scary demo, I doubt sub kiloton would be your pick. IIRC, there were some tiny tac nukes back in the early decades with yields down to 0.02 kilotons that could fit into artillery shells, etc. which were phased out as more trouble than they were worth. Conventional munitions could develop yields approaching that range, in groups, more cheaply and safely to your own troops. (I used to belong to a nuclear disarmament group, in a marginal way, used to try and keep up with all this madness) Really, more I think about it, the more absurd a demo bomb seems. People know what large explosions are, and what nukes bring to that game. It's not like Ukraine watches a giant crater made in a sunflower field and says, oh dear, now we know nukes are real! Let's bargain!

Nor would most of us. I am not far from a base that's a linchpin of the nuclear strike force. Our old stone foundation, two feet thick, might give some protection in the basement, but we would eventually starve with everyone else. Meanwhile, Ukraine does what I've been hoping they would do for months, bombing the Kerch Strait bridge. (The Marilyn Monroe bit was icing on the cake...) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/08/crimea-kerch-bridge-attack-explosion-russia-ukraine/ Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, tweeted a picture of the damaged bridge and said: “@Crimea, long time no see” along with a heart emoji. And the head of Ukraine’s postal service said the agency would issue a new stamp showing a damaged bridge reading: “Crimean Bridge — Done.” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, tweeted a picture of the burning bridge paired with a grainy black-and-white clip of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President,” in an apparent reference to Putin’s 70th birthday, which was Friday.

(bolding mine) Hehe! Those sound nice, especially where one ventures far into the trees where an extension cord won't reach. I've got a cordless mower, but it's got NiMH batteries, which don't do so well in capacity as Li-ion.

Call me a optimist, I think Putin uses tac nukes solely as weapons of intimidation, not of war. He's not a complete idiot, and realizes that prevailing winds are likely to carry radioactive dust into Russia. The largest tac nukes yield ten kilotons, which is two-thirds the yield of Little Boy, at Hiroshima. Their use would be so monstrous that Russia would descend to the deepest depths of pariah status, even with allies. The people would suffer great hardship and it's very likely Putin would be disposed of, Lavrentiy Beria style. Not sure he's really terminally ill (the world should be so lucky), and he could fear an ignominious end.

OK, thanks, I see now. Normally, automatic doors use a light beam that is interrupted by a body. Heat sensors don't work well, because weather causes too much variation in both air temperature and in hand temperature. So, as @Sensei says, it may use sound, so touching it would mess it up (make it "deaf") and it would not work.

Detect your hand? Not clear what that means. Your door sensor reads the pattern of your palm? Or in some way makes a positive ID of your hand? This sure doesn't sound low budget, if that's what you are describing. Quite sophisticated in fact. Like Fort Detrick Biohazard Lab sophisticated.

You must be pretty fit. Bowsaws are hard work. I've used one but never on stock more than three inches thick. One way to make felling easier (aside from waiting for the timber to die and dry) is to lop off as many branches as possible, so that what falls is more a pole and less dendrite ish. Easier to control the fall, less catching on neighbors. You can find videos on the method for creating a "hinge" which directs the fall. Wedges help a lot. And charting in advance your own exit path. If you stick with girdling (no jokes, I promise), then @zapatos has clarified the importance of cutting all the way through the xylem, to heartwood. (second joke resisted!) I am told by a fellow amateur lumberjack (he's okay) that some oaks really hoard trunk water, so girdling them might mean a longer wait. Really, with oak, it may be time to think about a chainsaw. If polluting two cycle engines are objected to, there are some decent electrics out there now for smaller scale stuff. I got along with a crappy little Black and Decker for years.

Girdling, as it's called, is an ancient technique to thin forests using less heavy equipment than felling. The tops of many species, when girdled, will dry faster, but not the trunks. (And tops can be hard to get to, for harvesting firewood) And some species still absorb water in their trunks after girdling. Bear in mind that the xylem, which is hard to cut all the way through in girdling, can still carry water. Girdling just breaks the phloem and cambium, typically. Generally, splitting and stacking in a sunny spot is your best method.

Not sure what happened with notifications, but I replied directly to your earlier post, quoting it, and providing a NASA paper that directly answers your question. In the paper's first two paragraphs, in fact. To save you some scrolling, here it is again: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2378/study-climate-change-rapidly-warming-worlds-lakes/ (A secure, encrypted website, should be safe to click) "Will go up," it turns out, should be present tense.