npts2020

I was a member of a food coop in a town that had enough grocery stores. We operated successfully for almost a decade distributing orders once a week from a member's garage. It wasn't until the BoD decided to move into a store and operate 7 days a week that there was any real financial struggle. Even then, it took another decade until the enterprise finally folded, owing <$10,000, mostly in back rent. It seems like the politics of running a volunteer-run organization was a bigger reason than economics for its demise since $10,000 really isn't that much money for an organization with several hundred members.

Science isn't about "proving" or "disproving" anything. It is about putting forth the best explanation for a given phenomena using experimentation and observation. When one doesn't precisely define terms being used and relies on semantics to present their side, it doesn't make for a strong argument.

Unlike health care, grocers don't have a government subsidized "affordable" care act to assure their profits. IMO it is the notion that one has to directly profit as much as possible from every activity, including ones necessary for human survival, that is the biggest problem. When the reason for doing something is profit rather than helping fellow humans, this is what you get. I think if Mamdani puts people who know how to successfully run food cooperatives rather than capitalist grocery stores in charge, he will have a very good chance of success, even with the opposition of all those who have already stated they will do whatever they can to undermine everything he tries to do.

Ya, and they are likely to spend even more to try making sure everything he does, fails. It's just a shame that the leadership in the Democratic Party is so bought and paid for by corporate interests that they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into supporting him.

With more citizens in prisons than nearly every country in the world, it seems to me Americans have a rather odd idea of what "freedom" is, especially when I hear claims of "freest country in the world".

IMO the anti spam measures here are probably stronger than the average site so it may be that we are the test site for getting around measures at other sites.

Potassium permanganate is not extremely hazardous but it can cause dermatitis and in high concentration will eat away the skin if not washed off after contact. One of the medical uses is for cleansing wounds.

Completely off topic but I found it humorous when googling "drax", that only one entry on the first page was for what I was making sure you were talking about. The rest were all for "Drax the Destroyer" from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

Then allow me to attack your very first premise. How is it I can think of things I don't believe exist? Isn't that the difference between imagination and reality (whatever subjective definition one wishes to give those terms)?

You can definitely convert the up an down of waves into forward motion with a scheme similar to the OP but it I question whether it could done with enough efficiency to be practical. It doesn't seem like it would be very useful if all you get is something like a thousandth of a centimeter of forward progress per wave. *also, it might be necessary for the "rope" to be rigid so it doesn't just swing back and forth under the boat.

IMO it has to do with internet access where virtually the entire populace can be fed a BS narrative where the sole relation to reality is that (most) peoples' lives are not getting better/easier.

u tell me I can't because I don't understand the basis for virtually all of your claims others have raised unanswered objections to.

What if you believe not ALL of "existence" is alive?

For me Marx is simply the method of critiquing things from a specific point of view. Whether one agrees or not with the underlying assumptions will pretty much predict if one is a supporter or opponent of the ideology, I think

Oil companies will drill for as long as they can make a dime off the last barrel extracted but the writing is on the wall and those that don't adapt will get government bailouts and subsidies until they finally go out of business. As to the OP I'm with Exchemist on this in that I feel a lot of unproven assumptions are being made about stability and safety of capture enclosures, especially in places where fracking has been allowed. For about the same cost or not much more (all mostly way less over time tho), sources that don't require carbon storage could be installed.

In the USofA, we don't know what Marxism is but we hate it, doncha know. 🤪

This is but one example of how you do not even understand what science actually is. No scientist I know talks about any theory (such as evolution) as "truth", it is simply the current best explanation that agrees with all of the evidence for a given phenomenon. Sure, but it should be more than sufficient to get the gist of what is written and decide whether it is worthwhile to become a student of something. The first time I read the bible cover to cover, I was 12 and an acolyte at our local church. At that time I didn't really have knowledge to critique what it contained from a scientific point of view but there are more than enough contradictions (an eye for an eye vs turn the other cheek for example) to have gotten me to consider perhaps it was not an infallible document. The next time, I was 20 and an engineer on a nuclear vessel by which time it seemed to me that scientists agree with and trust each other FAR more than do religious proponents (ever hear of even a threatened war over competing TOE theories?). The reason for this is that scientists have to adhere to rigorous rules of discovery and fit their debate within the confines of what is knowable in order to construct a theory and this applies to every discipline, whereas every proponent of religion I have ever met will evade answering contradictions or try to overcome them with magic.

Then you have to decide which parts of the bible you want to pick and choose to take literally or not. Personally, there isn't much, if anything, I would take literally from that book. Leaving aside Phi's argument (with which I completely agree), do you have any idea of how much space a years worth of food for an elephant would occupy? (hint; an African elephant consumes 4-6% of its body weight in plant matter on a daily basis) And that is just one species...

I suppose. That is, if you want to call televangelists, anti-abortionists Christian nationalists and the like---politicians.

The bible also says every species in the world was jammed into a boat with about 100,000 square feet of cargo space for 40 days. Just between reptiles and mammals, there is approximately 20,000 known species. Leaving aside the fact that scientists discover new species all the time, making it highly unlikely that anyone from Noah's age would be able to collect them all, that only gives you around a 2 1/4 foot square for each pair of animals. Then you have more than a million species of insects and arachnids...

What makes you think creation is even possible? I have yet to see an example of anyone creating anything from "nothing".

My biggest problem with religions is when the practitioners want impose their own beliefs (which almost none of them follow 100% of the time, anyway) on others.

No, not so much. Opinions are subjective. That which is objective is not opinion. No, the e.g. results of an experiment are available for all to see, and (in principle) recreate. Even as far as religious discussions go, it would be in the form of documents everyone could read. To expand on this a bit, in science it isn't just "someone else's" opinion, it's everyone else who has performed the same experiment and come up with the same results opinion. I am certain if someone comes up with a method (other than dying) of testing for a soul, there will be no shortage of people attempting to do so.

Doesn't it make sense, though, that as the Earth warms and ice on land melts and flows into oceans the shift in weight distribution will cause tectonic plates to move more than the would otherwise, causing things like more severe and frequent earthquakes and volcanoes?

Seems to me, the likelihood is that solving whatever problem is necessitating a move will be far easier than actually moving the planet, which may also have unanticipated consequences.