Steve81

It’s more an observation of how he became to be a criminal, FWIW. I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt. We’re all human, with all the attendant foibles. I think underneath that psychopathic appearing exterior is just another person. I don’t pretend to know what he’s lived through; I can only observe what I see. That’s why psychology is so difficult. Honestly, I think it would be fascinating to have a deep conversation with the man.

It helps to be passionate about something that is perceived as “good” in your culture. A nigh universal “good” is serving others. To wit, every society that has some concept or another of a physician considers the profession noble, even if individual physicians may not live up to that ideal. To expound further, consider the case of a physician that is passionate about what he does vs one who merely does it for a paycheck. Assuming all else is equal, who is likely to have better patient outcomes? Who is less likely to “burn out” due to the demands of the profession? As to value, that is entirely subjective. I would only suggest that you live such that you feel you are valuable. Objectively, we’re nothing more than the product of a curious series of events that happened in the right place and at the right time. We are a speck in the vastness of the time and space that is the universe. Absolutely agree.

Gracias @Sensei. You’re living up to your moniker!

Thanks for the info! Does this really apply for the case of dentists, where the search term is something along the lines of “dentists near me” ?

Living passionately is superior to simple survival or contentment.

That part, clearly not. Trying to figure out how to beat COVID or help with illegal immigration, yes. The man was just simply out of his depth, and the mockery combined with his ego didn’t let him see it, and turned him into what he became. He is ignorant, but thinks he’s a genius. That’s a rather dangerous combination.

That’s the ego / defensiveness factor at play. He can’t accept the rebuke implied by the vote.

My thoughts on the psychological tendencies of Donald Trump…love trying to read those tea leaves 😆 1. Impulse control & communication: he spouts off half baked, oftentimes offensive things. I’d opine he’s not necessarily trying to be an a-hole sometimes, nor is he mentally retarded; he just doesn’t know how to communicate his ideas effectively. Injecting bleach may be a horrible plan, but the concept of something that could disinfect us from the inside out is hardly a bad thing; it doesn’t exist, though it would be nice if it did. I was taking to a dentist about this yesterday, and she observed that she “injects” bleach regularly during root canals to sterilize the area. 2. Defensiveness and grudge holding. Due to the above, Trump tends to get a great deal of negative feedback, which he takes a great deal of personal offense to. The effects of this are quite clear, and I don’t think I need to say more. My *non-professional* opinion is that Trump may well have good intentions and this comes through in his attempts to get the ball rolling on certain issues. He’s just severely misunderstood due to #1, and this causes him to be mocked, leading to #2. Not a good mix of characteristics for being POTUS, but he may not be the devil incarnate either. Edit for clarification: bleach is used at the root canal site, vs injected into the blood stream.

AFAIK, all the big cargo ships and super tankers are diesels. They’re much more fuel efficient, and cheaper to operate as a result. They also have nasty emissions, but that’s another story. https://dieselforum.org/port--marine#:~:text=Moving this trade through sea,%2C performance%2C durability and reliability.

Depends on the ship. A lot of vessels rely on massive diesel engines, vs steam boilers driving geared turbines these days. Outside of nuclear powered ships, I believe gas turbines are pretty popular in the navy due to their power to weight ratio. https://www.cruisehive.com/how-do-cruise-ships-get-fresh-water/88883 https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/ddg-51-upgrade.htm

Exactly 😄 I actually decided to bring this up with my boss as work regarding our clients; afaik we don’t do this kind of filtering currently. Given that dentists aren’t exactly international conglomerates, may as well block everyone else. Couldn’t do that at my old job because we did international development, so we had people all over the globe.

Not under this idea. If everyone on board with my proposal blocks everyone who isn’t, there’s nowhere a Russian could VPN to that will have access. They’d have to physically travel to a place that isn’t blocked.

This might be helpful regarding the history / development of modern computing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general-purpose_CPUs and some other basics You can see how massively complex a modern CPU is here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count And a little comp sci 101 https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-half-adder-and-full-adder/amp/

Hardware is the physical side, including your hard drive example. Software is the firmware, OS, programs you know and love, etc. Firmware is where physical and software connect, so to speak. Without it, your computer is a glorified paper weight. https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/what-is-firmware

I’d say it’s not really possible to come to a meaningful agreement. There’s no good way to differentiate between the actions of a malicious private hacker collective, and another similar group that just so happens to have state sponsorship. It’s a problem of plausible deniability. OTOH, it makes a pretty convenient stick to use against a nation that a good chunk of the developed world thinks is acting barbaric. It also hampers their attempts to wage a cyber-campaign against us, as an added bonus.

https://www.cfr.org/blog/russias-war-against-ukraine-catalyzing-internet-fragmentation?amp An interesting read on the cyber aspect, which got me thinking… If ICANN is unwilling to act, there seems precious little that could stop the US and it’s allies from utilizing Geo IP Filters to cut off access to Russia, and anyone unwilling to do the same.

It would have to be done in secret to avoid another Cuban missile crisis. Basically a glorified magic trick: poof Taiwan has nukes.

Certainly where leadership is determined by birth it’s possible (North Korea as an example). In a society where leadership is chosen by the people in some manner, it’s less likely.

I think the biggest argument in favor of your approach is playing out today. Crazy people don’t typically become heads of state; however, some have observed that Putin has seemingly declined over the years, which may make him less rational. Of course, he could also be playing to the “madman theory.”

I’m talking about the power plant application from my prior post, FYI. Sorry for the confusion. It is, though tangentially relates. Was just replying to iNow’s astute observation that we mostly need more fresh water.

I presume you’re responding to me, but it’s not clear since you didn’t quote me. The only major metal component salt water would come into contact with is the boiler, AFAIK. Clean it out occasionally, and maybe even sell the sea salt.

Seems like with all the waste heat associated with thermal power plants, there would be opportunities to use that energy for such a purpose via distillation.

Bingo! Agreed!

FWIW… US capacity to project power against such opponents on their home turf is rather limited. Moreover, only a madman would suggest a direct conflict between nuclear armed superpowers. Even at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, with all the tension involved, this much was realized. This explains our strategy in Ukraine, and suggests what we should do proactively in Taiwan: make them a nuclear armed (relative for their size) superpower. Can they handle that responsibility? One can never be sure. However, clearly it would be trivial for them to build nuclear weapons from a technical standpoint; they simply choose not to. That suggests the kind of people that can be trusted. It wouldn’t really require that many weapons either. A sufficient number of warheads with the ability (range, non-interceptability) to reach the major population centers of China would be adequate deterrence.

That’s pretty good 😄