TheVat

Well, really, contempt for human life and murdering medical staff does have some parallels with Israel's current tactics which are ignoring clauses of the Geneva Convention (1949, btw) quite thoroughly. I know you are a careful observer of news, so you can't have missed this. But I wasn't trying to make a perfect analogy, just point out that saving lives doesn't require some binary choice where the only choices are mass starvation or an entire city is annihilated. Others here have pointed out that there were other options to bring a Japanese surrender. But those didn't provide a way to show Russia how big a stick we now had. I wasn't saying they were completely noncombatants. No city in Japan could possibly have been so, given the massive national mobilization in that war. Again, I was making a different and broader point - that when you annihilate a city, you will kill mostly civilians, and violate that Geneva clause mentioned above. How can we Americans claim moral superiority over the Japanese if, after condemning them for indiscriminate mass murder, we then engage in same? As an American, I've given this some thought, and I feel strongly that this was a barbarous and shameful chapter in our history in which we cannot claim a moral high road. I will simply not validate Hiroshima and give the monstrous atrocity of a nuclear attack some veneer of moral value. That's a Strangelovian step I cannot make, so we may have to disagree on that.

It is the sort of point that dissolves like cheap toilet paper on scrutiny. To offer a quick exposure of the absurdity, consider the situation of Palestinians especiallly those facing starvation in Gaza. Clearly, dropping a high-yield nuke on Tel Aviv would save thousands in Gaza from the kind of death you describe. They will likely be dead if Israel continues its present mode of warfare and obstruction of UN aid for another six months. And most of them are not soldiers who have had some preparation for facing death - most of them are women and children with zero involvement in any aggression towards Israel. Generally, all of these "saving lives" arguments operate on the morally abhorrent principle that "our lives are of more value than their lives, so yeah, let's nuke a whole city full of noncombatants."

I was going to mention this. I experience schadenfreude more often than I'd care to say. And sometimes a touch of weltschmertz. Recently, I was feeling a sort of lethargy and sleepiness which I get intermittently in the Spring. The German word for this is Frühjahrsmüdigkeit. Generally, I can see how Germans have that penchant for fields like philosophy and psychology, because they will develop very precise and specific terms for so many things. To help out those cunning linguists in Germany, I have coined a term for @geordief s experience with potato eating: Notwendigkeitkartoffelnzufertigmachenschmertz.

It is unfortunate that most observation stations have been set up like this one at Hooper, Colorado.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_Watchtower So instead of attracting scientists who can set up proper recording arrays, it attracts the true believers (or tourists looking for something offbeat). Or nuts, e.g. Me too. I figured "providence" was provenance.

Could just be a vestigial thing from parents encouraging a clean plate (or no pudding!). Maybe as we get old, ancient memories and responses from early life surface in our minds. And create such peculiar emotions that are hard to identify. (x-post with Peterkin)

I am curious why you would not answer, if you don't believe in a personal creator being, in the negative? Why not just say that you see God as a human symbol of those moral teachings you see as universal? This whole topic is fraught with multiple definitions, which makes surveys shaky. I wonder if some people who do not believe in a creator being, which would fit the term atheism, call themselves agnostic simply because they can't rule out some kind of pantheism or panpsychism. Or, as iNow likes to suggest, they are afraid of driving away religious people (who dominate their community) by identifying as atheist.

😀 Yep, global shutter is still pretty high-end for CMOS. Generally, phones have moved away from CCD (which do have global shutter) toward CMOS due to its lower cost and other technical aspects like direct pixel access. Generally phone cameras have a lot of distortion because of both CMOS rolling shutter and the choice of wide-angle lenses which leads to barrel distortion. And also pincushion distortion if a zoom is used.

@CharonY I was just pointing out how top and bottom levels aren't always distinctly separated functionally, as in the whale fecal detritus pathway. (also decomp pathways from larger animals) That is what I meant by a loop rather than a simple hierarchy. But yes, for sure there are hierarchical levels as nutrients pass up through trophic levels and isotopes concentrate.

I am not able to tell if it's a cylinder or just something angled to present a narrow side of itself that is somewhat rounded. A photo analysis expert on those five frames would sure help. Yeah, do post more videos/pics if you want. If mods think not here, then maybe a thread devoted to photographic material and its interpretation? I have a photo expert in the family who can weigh in now and then.

Pecker stands in court today to discuss porn star Stormy Daniels. https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-hush-money-national-enquirer-d44d4a7ce66cc08edb5981b3afb882ba

Looks like a drone that strayed into forbidden air space near LaGuardia. It's apparent speed looks to me like an artifact of it and the plane's relative speeds. I would expect UAP sightings to jump as more people are playing with drones, some not responsibly.

See my previous post. And learn about trophic cascades. The chain is more like a loop, where autotrophs and heterotrophs interact in complex ways. Please read all replies, you can learn a lot.

I find it interesting that many hunter-gatherer peoples did not believe in a personal god, but saw nature as alive, in various blends of animism and pantheism. The notion of a powerful Boss deity seems to have emerged along with more hierarchical societies and, as others note here, used for controlling hoi polloi. As a person in touch with my inner HG, I find the pantheist view to be prima facie less delusional. We seem to be hard wired to view nature as alive, and then unlearn that in western culture through indoctrination. Basically, one can be a dualist, in the sense of attributing a spiritual aspect to matter, without being a supernaturalist. The current philosophical stance of panpsychism seems closer to this, where matter is hypothesized to have some intrinsic consciousness however rudimentary.

We love our carbs! Maybe a better way to get the nuances of food chains is through trophic cascades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_cascade Also, in understanding how large heterotrophs also "produce," look at fecal detritus pathways. Whales have been studied, regarding their importance in this kind of pathway.... https://marinesanctuary.org/blog/whale-poop-and-climate-change/

I should have mentioned that house loads like tv and computers are more capacitive, and motor stuff (washers, vacs, fridge compressors, induction stoves, ballasts, anything with lots of coils of wire) are inductive loads. So impedance would depend on which dominates a circuit. And in houses it is mainly inductive reactance, given the heavy current draw of appliances, furnace blowers, AC, etc. Good question. And beyond me, given am not sure how compressibility is defined in this context. Smaller holes? 🙂 I understand that In AC circuits where there are reactive elements the V and I may not reach the same amplitude peaks at the same time. This time difference, AKA phase shift, which ranges from 0 to 90° - Seth is saying this isn't significant in the length of a house circuit (usually a single phase circuit, unless your home contains some sort of cottage industry), if I'm following this. I am mainly (NPI) a guy with some cable and a Klein multimeter who tinkers with house wiring, so I just aspire to be less stupid and not burn the place down.