Jez

I'm from the UK, does not happen here. Are there documented cases that show this happening that I can read? How is it even allowed? How can a loan creditor even know what skin colour the applicant is? We also cannot sue the Government directly but we use a process called Judicial Review, and many people receive the due remedy by following that route. It exists in the USA too. If it does not function in the same way and achieve the same goals, then that is where the problem is. I say 'problem' not only in so far as people might be disenfranchised from seeking a remedy, but if they are then it is also a screen behind which intolerance and other discriminations are allowed to fester. There will always be discrimination, the cure is not so much to try to stop it but to ensure there are means to confront it, challenge it, test it and seek remedies. Without that in place, then the cause is lost before it starts. With the right legal redress in place, it encourages those in power and authority to get on and do the right thing, keeps them (a bit more) honest. If what you just put there is on the nail, then it seems to me the problem in the US is your laws. If you cannot mount appropriate Judicial Reviews, and if your laws holding Gov to account (both State and Federal) are broken then there is no point trying to figure out alternative 'band-aid' solutions you might want Gov to do to fix things. That's not the problem, if the problem is Gov itself. Seems to me the first step is to have laws enough to be able to force Gov to deal with issues and provide remedies, not to dream up ideas for solutions that you can suggest to them that they can ignore. You do have Judicial Review, perhaps it has become broken by habitual misuse? I can't say, but from what you've said it seems that is the problem. 'Racism within the system' would exacerbate the problem, but it's not the problem because there will always be injustice. The problem seems to me (given what you just said) is that you can't use legal means to shine the cleansing rays of sunlight on such injustice.

I wasn't referring to that part. I was referring to your comment that you "know people who suffered financial harm at the hands of US government laws that only negatively impacted black people". Then I disagree that is an example for reparations. There are legal avenues for individuals with quantifiable harm as a result of unlawful behaviours, or 'unfair' applications of the law. But maybe it is just a terminology thing, and that is what you mean by reparations, in which I agree. Of course! But it has to follow a legal avenue to test the law, I call that 'a legal case', not 'reparations'. I would certainly enable them to seek the legal avenues, by providing legal aid funding, but what you are describing are not things for generalised reparations (which is what I would take the word to mean in this context), these are cases to put before the courts so that the law can be tested and amended where needed. ... if that is NOT done then the law will carry on being discriminatory, and that is unhelpful.

The few surviving victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the relatives of the deceased, should be empowered and assisted to bring legal cases for remedies. I whole heartedly agree and it is an ongoing injustice that this remains unresolved. I would say, and agree with you if this is your point, it would be better for US Gov to draw up an agreement to settle the matter favourably with, as you say, adequate reparations for this having happened in the country for which they are the public authority. I'm unclear if you are saying this is a case for general reparations to everyone in the city/state/country/world with the same skin colour as the victims, you're not saying that are you? This case is beyond comprehension in the blatant bloody racism that drove it. Those individuals responsible should have suffered legal consequences.

Funnily enough I have been thinking that through, because the same sort of thoughts occurred to me. In particular, if that was me and my loot, I don't like any step where I might have to judge 1/5th versus 4/5ths of the pile, I mean, we're geared to weigh up two equal sides, right? I was thinking that the pile first needs to be roughed out into 1/5th and 4/5ths and the larger then split into 4, and one stands out. Once in 4 equal piles, according to the 4 pirates engaged in that split, items in the 'excess' pile can be used or added to so as to 'tune' the right number of pirates during the 4 way split. Now we have 5 piles, 4 of which are equal according to 4 of them, and .... still trying to work out the next bit.

You've given specific examples of what help 'could be' given, but, unless I missed it, the bit you appear to be missing is specific examples of how to determine who has been discriminated and to what degree they need that help. If you can objectively define what being discriminated means, and that objectivity makes sense and is fair to all creeds and colours without embedding yet further racism into the metric, then I am all for society giving assistance to those people. Ultimately, that societal help comes from taxes which is heavily weighted to come from wealthy folk, any of whom may have 'whiteboards' or 'blackboards', if you see my meaning. I cannot dispute discrimination has existed, nor even continues to, but the question of who has suffered losses from that discrimination, how, and to what magnitude of losses, has to be part of the equation. What is your proposal to objectify that part?

Do you mean some past injustice, or something that remains a potential injustice. For sure, if a past instance of an injustice is documented and can be evidenced, and someone alive has suffered an articulable financial burden (alive, or living relatives) or lives with a compensation-worthy injury, then it requires a remedy for that instance We routinely see injustices born of prejudice, and such cases must be dealt with and remedies sought for the peaceful equity of society. But those that pay the cost of the remedies are to be those who engaged in that particular injustice, so could you clarify why you feel your point is relevant to the discussion?

It's absurd by any measure to consider repayment 'by skin colour', and harks to the OP's proposition that if you go looking for racism as the origin of 'X', then you'll find what you are looking for. But are the 'labelling' of past injustices not merely the differences between whiteboards and blackboards? There have been black slave owners and white slaves for as long as there has been slavery, if one goes looking then one will find that too .... Whether one can trace immoral gains through generations and equate "these dollar now" to "that dollar then", because without that level of auditability, the answer is objectively there cannot be some form of 'repayment'. In some cases, there are families in the UK who gained from Government compensation payments for slaves at the time of abolition, because all that was recorded precisely, and in those cases one can see a direct connection between 'that compensation' and 'that house' (say) and in those cases some of those people are taking it upon themselves to accept there is a connection. But in the general case, unless there is that sort of record, simply 'no', there can be no fair means for direct 'extraction' from one racial group to another, it is literally racist to do that. Society as a whole is paying for issues of today rooted in the past already and has been paying for decades, and we have all gained or lost from the past and we all now are elevated by the means of social taxation and benefits. The effects of the past on the privations of today are paid for in that way, and no social minority is untouched by some level of privation rooted in past injustices.

No idea what nensense is. But I can read the thread title and the OP and I was reacting to that. If it has gone off-topic in the meantime, you can thank me later for getting it back on track. A discussion on reparations, I see, are way off topic to the OP. 'Everyone' has both suffered and benefitted from slavery of the past. Still goes on extensively in Africa, maybe focus efforts on stopping it first than worrying about the past, for now?

Not really wanting to deep dive on this sort of topic but much of the discussions on racism strike me as fake and constructed means to create division which doesn't literally exist. The question then, really, is who and why is division being sought? I mean "even if" there was a person in the world that was the same colour as a white board, what on earth is the connection between objects just because they are the same colour?!? Worse still is that literally no-one is the colour of a white-board! Calling anyone 'white' or 'black' seems wholly racist from the get-go. We are all the same colour, melatonin, some are more coloured and some are less coloured. I actually resent being called white, I am not white. Just, less coloured. The only discriminatory colouration that can be pointed out is against ginger people, who have a different pigment making the red, pheomelanin. I mean they are called red heads but it's not really red either. I strongly believe that the only reason racism exists is because it's talked about. Stop pointing out the distinction and no-one will see it any more. It'd be like discussing freckles, or dimples, or a pointy chin. Maybe I should have a go and point out how people are different if they have a 'V' or 'U' shaped intertragic notch? I bet most people would need to look up what that even is, but once you know what it is, you'll be looking at people trying to work out 'if they are like you'!! 🤣 What a lot of nonsense.

Ah, sorry, I will hide my answer (if you want to) .. oh, OK, no editing later on .. meh.

You can run the 'take my pile if you think it's bigger' method for powers of 2, but not 5. OK, so the first step is to get the 1st pirate out of the way. 1. Rough out 1/5 of the loot, and ask if anyone wants it, if no-one wants it then keep adding to the pile until someone takes it, or if everyone wants it, keep removing pieces until there is only one pirate asking for it, then they get that. A pirate considering whether to take it has to decide whether they are more likely to get more at this stage than if they go to the next, so there is a motivation to 'lock in the deal' early. Then you can do this with any power of 2; 2. Roughly halve the remaining pile and the two pirates standing next to a given pile will spilt it like for two people. If there are 3 or more pirates standing next to a pile, move the treasure piece by piece to the other pile until each pile has two pirates who want to share that particular pile.

I would say it is impossible to be sure a solution can be found, as one pirate may always be unreasonable. I mean, it's in the job description, right? So I think there would have to be some component of compulsion that forces a pirate to agree what they are presented with is a fair share, even if they don't really think it is. Like the 'Here is $100 for you two people, you can give the other person $60 and you keep the $40 and agree that's fair, or neither of you gets anything'. Like that. There has to be something like a democratic acceptance of a given rule, and then to blindly agree that it is fair even if it isn't really. In fact, maybe I should say just like democracy! 😄 Here is what I'd say;

I don't mean the 'perfect ideal' Carnot of theory lessons. I just mean one that uses isentropic and isothermal phases. Like an Otto engine uses 2x isentropic/isochoric, and Stirling uses 2x isochoric/isothermal, so why are there so few examples, if any(?) of a 2x isentropic/isothermal machine?

Yes I came across that paper too, but in the absence of seeing a full explanation I could not really tell what the idea did, or how it worked. I mean, if you have a row of loose balls in an azimuthal slot, surely they'd all just work over to the heavier out-of-balance side of the rotation, under centripetal effects, and make the imbalance worse still? That's the substance of my question. If you only have loose passive elements in a rotating system, surely they always make the imbalance worse?

OK, will do that.

I've recently seen 'ABB' mentioned in hand tools and washing machines, being automatic ball balancers apparently consisting of ball bearings in a race track with some damping fluid. Do these only 'damp' the imbalance? I guess as the shaft experiences cyclic angular accelerations and decelerations then it'd damp those, is that it? So not really balancing the shaft masses by shifting CoG? Are there any passive shaft balancers that can shift the CoG to balance rotary motion of unbalanced shaft masses?

I'm interested in this question and it's unclear to me if/why there are few/no examples of a Carnot engine. I don't mean a 'perfect' Carnot engine, just something that aims to be isentropic-isothermal-isentropic-isothermal. I understand there has to be a temperature difference in the hot/cold sources to the working fluid else no thermal energy will be transferred. So the transfer can never be ideally isothermal. What I mean is that, for example, an Otto cycle is described as isentropic-isochoric-isentropic-isochoric, but there's no way a petrol ICE works 'exactly' that way, it's just a 'general' way to describe the aim of the 4 strokes, and any heat engine has rounded off corners and bits that don't match up perfectly to thermodynamic processes. So, likewise, a Carnot engine is one that is isentropic-isothermal-isentropic-isothermal, are there/have there been any examples of actual engines that 'aim' to work that way generally (accepting that they are 'imperfect', just like an ICE petrol engine is not a perfect Otto cycle but aims to be one)?