TheVat

My heart goes out to those in Lisbon who died or lost loved ones in the terrible funicular accident yesterday. This famous song was composed to commemorate the opening of the first funicular on Mt Vesuvius - I'm not posting it frivolously or to make light of a tragedy, but just as a musical nod to the history of the funicular and the love that it inspires.

Well yes, that I knew already, but I meant that I had thought it applied to anything using the counterbalance system. But apparently, as your wiki cite also mentions, it is a "type of cable railway system that connects points along a railway track laid on a steep slope..." IOW, I had erroneously thought funicular applied more broadly as to include suspended gondola systems (which may also use counter weighting). Also learned that some carry water tanks which can be filled at the top, if more weight is needed (e.g. fewer passengers coming down). The blanket term for the ones that suspend a gondola or seat up in the air is aerial lift. Gondola lifts, chairlifts, aerial trams, and funifors are some of the subcategories detailed here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_lift

The difference between a funicular and a gondola cable car. I am sorry people had to perish in Lisbon last night in order for me to understand the correct terminology. Funicular always means on tracks, going up a surface, often with a passenger compartment on gimbals or similar so that it stays level. The gondola cable car is the one that terrified (or would have, if that scene wasn't so ludicrous) in Moonraker. I.e. hanging over the void from a cable which, if you're a tourist, you hope is up to date on its inspections. And is free of Bond villains with sharp metal teeth gnawing away at it. Come to think of it, pretty much every Hollywood movie with a gondola car depicts it as a death trap.

I think it's safe to say that many Americans have little or no knowledge of the workings of global reserve currencies.

Didn't Schrodangler work out the math on this already? Possibly Max Planck first raised these questions.

If one is just skimming the new posts and eyes land on that sentence, one can briefly wonder what sort of physics they're doing around here.

You guys are really being 509 about Roman numerals.

Seems part of the growing body of critique around TESCREAL. A critical perspective I very much share, if that hasn't been obvious in my postings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL According to critics of these philosophies, TESCREAL describes overlapping movements endorsed by prominent people in the tech industry to provide intellectual backing to pursue and prioritize projects including artificial general intelligence (AGI), life extension, and space colonization.[1][4][6] Science fiction author Charles Stross, using the example of space colonization, argued that the ideologies allow billionaires to pursue massive personal projects driven by a right-wing interpretation of science fiction by arguing that not to pursue such projects poses an existential risk to society.[7] Gebru and Torres write that, using the threat of extinction, TESCREALists can justify "attempts to build unscoped systems which are inherently unsafe".[1] Media scholar Ethan Zuckerman argues that by only considering goals that are valuable to the TESCREAL movement, futuristic projects with more immediate drawbacks, such as racial inequity, algorithmic bias, and environmental degradation, can be justified.[8] Philosopher Yogi Hale Hendlin has argued that by both ignoring the human causes of societal problems and over-engineering solutions, TESCREALists ignore the context in which many problems arise.[9] Camille Sojit Pejcha wrote in Document Journal that TESCREAL is a tool for tech elites to concentrate power.[6] In The Washington Spectator, Dave Troy called TESCREAL an "ends justifies the means" movement that is antithetical to "democratic, inclusive, fair, patient, and just governance".[4] Gil Duran wrote that "TESCREAL", "authoritarian technocracy", and "techno-optimism" were phrases used in early 2024 to describe a new ideology emerging in the tech industry.[10]

I just realized "Let's drop everything and go study gravity" would be a nifty title for a popular science article. Also, just checking, is necessity still the mother of invention? Or is the maternity being contested?

Three of you have asserted this here (and thanks all for replies), but my earlier question is still broadly: how would we empirically verify the nature of truly empty space. Even the voids between galaxy clusters are still within a particle horizon of something material and so can be affected. Can we assert that a void such that all matter is beyond a particle horizon, where nothing is causally connected to that void, must still have topology and fields and vacuum energy and permittivity and so on? It sounds like I'm going off on a Rovelli limb and a bit beyond, asking if even topology or geometry can be real where there is nothing to interact or have a metric applied.

The technical term for that is snackology. Which is similar to the Kama Sutra, except it has only the positions you deserve.

Fair point. I figured that might be mentioned. For some reason, space seems more that way, perhaps because I am unclear as to what properties of space are intrinsic to it. An electron has a particular charge even in an otherwise empty universe, or does it? (so ridiculously hypothetical I know, but hey it's the phil sandbox haha) So would one say that space has a particular property in an empty universe? Would vacuum energy still mean anything? I admit I'm floundering a bit, so any flotation device welcomed.

Even early math used very little of what we think of as math, i.e. algebraic equations. Pythagoras had his famous "proof by rearrangement" which used only geometric arrangement.

This being a phil thread, one could ask if space is anything more than a bundle of properties around matter. Without matter/energy, and translation or rotation, where would this bundle go? -- volume, permeability, permittivity... would be meaningless.

Yep, and to take a WAG, I would say the earliest empirical gathering of observations were probably more in the area of seasonal changes, solar and celestial bodies positions, animal behavior, and plants. (i.e. astronomy, zoology, and botany were "mothers")

Just standard social media hot air from Gasbag 47. There's zero legal basis for going after a philanthropist who's been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Turnip is just embarrassing himself. Unless Turnip develops the craft to stuff grand juries, and maybe establish a military junta, this is just another distraction.

It may interest you to know that I put fog harvesting into the Google AI, and got a summary nearly identical to that post. The new member may wish to read the site rules on AI use. And perhaps they could tell us what they want to discuss.

I know this area, it's basically Sioux City, and it pivots more readily than the truly deep rural Iowa. I've seen places like that go for a Rethuglican president and then vote for a Demo state legislator. This relates more to local levels of knowledge on state compared to national issues. But there can also be a disgruntled-by-clownocracy current there, too. And they could show up on that hook in 26.

Hadn't heard that particular one, but heard ones like that. That's room 23, scrambled egg? I think I only got that because we had a Filipino woman as neighbor for couple years and her accent was like that. Anyway (mod approaches, slapping baton against his palm) I think it's questionable how pyrolysis ovens (self-cleaning ovens) would be an answer to carbon reduction. And the other concept, "grow lots of trees to fix carbon," doesn't seem like breaking news.

How does one relate this anomaly, if it is one, to climate generally? This seems to border on an anecdote, given that weather often presents brief anomalous events.

Domo arigato...

Bohm's 1980 book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, seems to be the most Plato Cavey of the theories I've encountered. AFAICT the thrust of his argument is that it would be a cool explanation and somehow ties in with Karl Pribram's brain research and evidence for holographic (v localized) memory. Given that Bohm is anti reductionism, he has not gained a lot of traction with most physicists.

I had the same thing yesterday, telling me I was blocked and that I should contact the website admin. And I was using a chrome browser. The "contact the admin" message is sorta funny given that most online forums have a mail relay system such that you have to be logged on to reach an admin.

I know what you mean - I've had phone conversations where I occasionally have to say "gotta deal with traffic for a minute" (or if I had to respond in the moment to traffic I will just explain I need them to repeat what they said) and they always understand. I always prioritize my attention to the road when conversing, either way, but I don't assume everyone does that. I recall being a passenger with someone who would look at people in the car while talking with them, and it was pretty unnerving. Contracting out has several woes. In prisons for example there may be a push towards profit which results in guards getting rewarded for catching inmates out on petty infractions because that can be used to extend their stays and ensure filled beds. Anything profit-centered in legal enforcement can encourage excessive zeal to ticket people or detain them as much as possible. There's an implicit pressure to judge harshly and be inflexible - this in turn reduces public respect for the law.

I guess one problem with this is where funding cuts lead to labor reduction resulting in some photos not being reviewed by humans, so a ticket (which could be quite an imposition on someone with long work hours, limited funds, etc) is sent before common sense ("he just popped a mint in his mouth, he's not eating a meal") can be applied. Also I'm a bit puzzled that talking on the phone would be a ticketable offense - texting I can see, and that's illegal in most states AFAIK, but not sure how much conversing on a cellphone differs from talking with a passenger (especially if one is using speaker or Bluetooth, and so both hands can drive). Same reservations about telling people how to secure their pets. Some cats are calmer in someone's lap rather than a carrier - do we need Big Brother to make all those decisions for us? Also, given that many people don't actually like to be surveilled, announcing that you are installing AI cams on a stretch of road could cause a sharp rise in motorists taking alternate routes (I would definitely be one of them) and in turn making those routes overcrowded and more dangerous.