TheVat

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.

Seems to be a problem if all pirates happen to think one of the sui generis items is by far the most valuable part of the treasure. Let's call it the Holy Grail. They obtained it by bravely confronting the Gorge of Eternal Peril, the deadly Rabbit of Caerbannog, the Knights Who Say "Ni!", etc. The Holy Grail cannot be divided up, therefore four pirates are dissatisfied. Which leads me to speculative answer number three (actually I've lost track of the number, perhaps it is four)

Well that is a kind of treasure where you have heterogeneous collection of objects. If, as you indicate... ...then many puzzle solvers assume it is items that are to be traded as money, like gold coins. Hence, pirates. My solution is workable when the treasure is fairly homogeneous and subjective estimates are simply about amount. These are experienced pirates who know the current exchange rate for doubloons. Estimates, in my system, will tend to converge on accurate monetary appraisals. With heterogeneous or sui generis items, it would seem highly improbable that any accord could be reached, and game theory goes out the window. Time to call Sotheby's. I know I am missing something (but that's the fun, yes?)

It got a laugh from me, as one more of those gosh isn't that really doing it the hard way sorts of fixes. (all the thermodynamic, ecological, and basic physics problems aside) One starts to marvel at how averse some folks are to clean energy technology. The Right-Wing media seem to have decided that green innovation and tax incentives is some kind of Satanic conspiracy that may include the use of babies and pets as fuel.

Think I see it.

Seems like none of the solutions really satisfy the situation as stated. To make an estimate requires getting some basic metric of the loot, like total mass or number of doubloons or whatever. Seems like some prior metric of value must be agreed upon, for estimates to be generally satisfactory and to have peace. Without the objectivity of math, how would the pirates ever avoid endless argument?

Is a double pan scale involved?

No. Ionization is common. Neutron capture, happening twice to a C12 nucleus, is a low probability event. Quite rare.