npts2020

21 hours ago, Endy0816 said:

I'm sure they're planning to simply wait DeSantis out. They can afford to play the long game.

Yep, and Disney can afford to buy the next governor and enough state and local legislators to do pretty much whatever they want...

Wonder what they would do if Disney closed its theme park and moved it?

14 minutes ago, iNow said:

Not entirely true. Humans tend to self-enforce when they see a risk of potential punishment for a behavior. 

You are talking about normal people, though, not the megalomaniacs and psychopaths that run things.

13 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

American agencies may well break the law to get hold of data.
Chinese ones don't need to because the law gives them the right to.

Do you understand the difference?

There is only a difference if the laws are actually enforced

11 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

and the problem isn't really Tiktok it's scarier than that.

The American "security" state doesn't like competition. The fact that agencies like DHS or DoJ (CIA doesn't bother with legalities) have to go through the court part of the government isn't much different from China. AFAIK the FISA court (the one that deals with secret type stuff) has never turned down a request for a warrant.

4 hours ago, Peterkin said:

8 hours ago, mistermack said:

then a warmer world will open up vast areas of Russia and Canada for use

Now, that one is wild. Are you aware of how much of Canada and Russia are already burning every summer? Guess what that's doing to the oxygen production and carbon capture capability of forests. Or how much of the northern ecosystem is collapsing because it depends on permafrost, the thawing of which, incidentally, accelerates climate change.  

And that's before you even start factoring in the severe winter storms, spring floods and summer droughts, tornadoes all across the central plains reaching farther east; hurricanes along the coast, reaching farther inland, unpredictable wind and rainfall, and all the plant diseases and insect infestations. 

Ya, and just wait till the Arctic clathrates start belching forth massive amounts of methane and carbon dioxide as they melt...

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

Without knowing the likely maximum population, how would one ascertain what is sustainable at which lifestyle?

That being said, most estimates suggest that the the world population is likely to flatten off at around 11 billion people. The next is what factors one would consider. I remember vaguely data suggesting that even with the capacity we got today, estimates suggest that can produce the necessary calories to sustain that number, but distribution would need to be more efficient. But high consumption lifestyles (like in many industrialized nations), technical changes would be necessary, including reduced use of fossil fuels, for example. 

Pretty much for these reasons, the resistance to sustainable industries is going to hurt folks down the road. It is not as if we couldn't have started decades ago.

If one figures out what a sustainable lifestyle is for the current population, those numbers can be extrapolated to any number of people as required. The problem in coming up with the initial estimate, mostly (IMO) is because many (if not most) people with the power to change things on the massive scale required don't like the answers and the figuring is complex enough to raise some doubts no matter how it is done, even if the answers are always basically the same.

Producing the basic necessities of life sustainably for everyone is relatively straightforward and *could* be done quickly, within a couple of years, with planning and cooperation. However, even those not caught up in the consumerist culture usually want a little more than just food and a place to sleep in their lives. Obviously, everyone in the world can't be flying around the world in a Lear jet or driving a Hummer but what about a small EV or motorcycle or will we all have to ride bicycles and walk? Will everyone have to become vegetarians and keep their thermostats above 24C in the summer and below 20C in the winter? What kinds of recreation are sustainable?

We did start a changeover decades ago. One of the great things Jimmy Carter did as President was to have a plan and start implementing it by putting solar panels on the White House but when Ronald Reagan was elected, one of his very first acts was to have those solar panels removed (some are still in operation at a small college in Maine) and abandon the Carter plan. 

Discussion of pi on another thread reminded me of this joke; Farmer Jedediah didn't want to send his son to college because of the expense and the fact he would lose the son's help on the farm while in school but his wife convinced him it would be worthwhile. After the first semester, the son is home and everyone is sitting around the supper table when Jedediah says, "So son, what kinda classes are ya takin' at that thar college?" The boy replies, "I'm taking French, Latin and math." The father says, "Ok, say something in French." The son says "C'est la vie". The older man just goes hmmph and tells the kid to say something in Latin so the Younger man says, "caveat emptor". Not knowing a word of either language, all Jedediah can do is shake his head and ask the boy to , "Say something mathematical." The son, chest swelling with pride at having answered his father's questions, blurts out, "Pi r squared." The farmer, raising his voice, says, "That's it! You are no longer going to college. Not only are you learning all kinds of useless stuff, you are learning wrong stuff. Everyone knows pie ain't squared, it's round. Cakes is squared."

10 hours ago, TheVat said:

The NewsGuard investigation found that for a sampling of searches on prominent news topics, almost 20 percent of the videos presented as search results contained misinformation. This means that for searches on topics ranging from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to school shootings and COVID vaccines, TikTok’s users are consistently fed false and misleading claims....

I wonder what percentage of videos from somewhere like Newsmax or Fox contains misinformation?

On 3/25/2023 at 8:30 PM, iNow said:

They don’t. We’re at around 7B people today and forecasted to go to approximately 11B in the next hundred years. Any projections claiming doubling of current numbers are outliers and can safely be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Well, according to the UN, the world passed 8,000,000,000 in mid-November but quibbling about exact numbers kind of misses the whole point about the world being seriously overpopulated for the amount and type of resources being used by that population. It also avoids the question of what kind of lifestyle that number of humans can live sustainably.

5 minutes ago, MigL said:

A John Cuthber pointed out yesterday, Canada took in over 1 Million immigrants last year.
What are the US and other developed countries doing for poor, displaced ( due to war, drought, lack of fishing resources ... ) peoples ?

Well, in the US, we are trying to make it impossible for anyone to come here...

Isn't it interesting (and pathetic) that in the "Land of the Free" we are constantly talking about banning things? I don't see where the spread of misinformation and propaganda is a legitimate concern in a country that allows its broadcasters on the airwaves to legally do the same. Seems to me it is all about getting rid of competition.

IMO the biggest problem in dealing with most global problems, especially climate change, is idolization of greed on a planet with 8,000,000,000+ (and growing) humans on it. No matter how much one has, individuals are expected to want more and more and more. This would be all well and good if there were unlimited resources but there seems to not be enough for all the world's citizens to live the lifestyle of an even relatively poor person in most "first world" countries, one of the reasons we are constantly at war (not just with the military) over resources. What happens when you double the numbers of humans in the next century, as some projections predict? Are we somehow going to magically have even more resources at that time? What is the lifestyle eight billion of us can reasonably expect to live if resources are distributed more evenly?

One thing that might be a "good picture" would be several people photoing or videoing the same event from different angles. 

I didn't see diethyl phthalate on the list but can say from experience it eats up many plastics.

On 3/20/2023 at 4:07 PM, MigL said:

They would have known you weren't Canadian as soon as you answered, unless your answer was "Yes. I'm sorry."

Or said, "Damn right, hoser".

Many, if not all, automatic transmissions in cars have beveled gears in the differential. Not sure if the size would be right but it should be plenty robust enough for whatever application you want it for.

16 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

1 the USA seems to be doing badly, in spite of paying more for healthcare (And it has got worse). Maybe they should change the system.

Trouble is, the "health" care providers own the government (note the ACA which should have been called the health care and insurance industry profits assurance act) and the populace doesn't seem much interested in soshulism in health care.

23 hours ago, iNow said:

Gerrymandering really isn't as relevant...

^^^ I fail to see what is absolute about this.

23 hours ago, iNow said:

It actually goes by electoral college votes in Maine and Nebraska, neither of which are winner take all stages, and thus districts there are extremely relevant, so be cautious speaking in absolutes.

Maine (4) and Nebraska (5) combine for a total of 9 of the 538 Electoral College votes so could possibly have a 4 vote difference from winner-take-all, not enough to have affected the outcome of any Presidential election in history (even in 2000, a 5 vote difference because Maine went for Gore and Nebraska went for Bush).

On 3/17/2023 at 10:57 AM, StringJunky said:

As a wannabee president, he's got to disperse those policies across the country and sell it to swingers in blue states, given that the margins are now very fine due to historical gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering really isn't as relevant in Presidential elections since it goes by total votes in the state and not the precinct those votes come from, that's why Republicans never seem to win the popular vote for President

What makes you think energy came "from" anywhere? According to the laws of physics you can't create or destroy energy, only change its form. If you can show that to be wrong, it would be a fantastic boost for your argument, otherwise it kind of disproves your theory. The problem is, humans live a linear existence with a definite beginning (birth) and end (death) with most of the things familiar to us having a similar profile. When you get into the quantum or cosmic realms, things often don't act as we expect so I don't see how anyone can speak with confidence about a beginning or end to a universe that could turn out to be infinite

The case shouldn't even be heard. Any other judge would throw the case out for the plaintiff's lack of standing.

I don't know if there is an analogy for electronics but in mechanical engineering they will use something called a "sacrificial anode". The way it works is to have a more reactive material near whatever it is you don't want corroded. For example, on board large ships the main engines are cooled with seawater (very corrosive) so to keep it from rusting out the condensers, zinc anodes are attached where saltwater passes through and they rust preferentially instead of the inside of the contraption.

Unless the two fluids you are mixing have the same viscosity to begin with, I don't see how it is possible to have homogenous viscosity without also having homogenous mixing. Whether your program will predict the correct outcome or not is a different matter...

Been reading some interesting stuff about Jupiter's moon Io and nobody has posted here in a while so, here goes. Only a little bigger than Earth's moon, Io is the densest object, not actually a planet (Earth is densest), in the solar system. It is also the most volcanically active and has the least water of any bodies in our neighborhood. Surface temperature is about -130C but lava flows have been measured to over 1200C and may exceed 1700C (about 3 times the hottest temps on Mercury). The gravities of Jupiter and sister moons Ganymede and Europa can cause "tides" of over 100m. Since there is no water, those tides are of rock! The magnetic field of Jupiter can generate lightening discharges of 400,000 volts and 3,000,000 amps, discharging from the moon into the upper atmosphere of the planet. (is this the reason the moon glows when eclipsed by Jupiter?) The magnetic field of Jupiter ionizes and pulls about a ton of material from Io into space every second, creating a plasma torus around the moon, fueling auroras on the planet, and doubling the size one would expect Jupiter's magnetosphere to be. (IMO) Conditions there will be a survival challenge for any organisms, even the most radical extremophiles from Earth so it is unlikely humans will ever get anything other than raw materials from there and certainly not anytime soon