TeknOShEeP
7hr ago
Counterpoint: Trump's proposed tarrifs on China (which he seems likely to attempt again) are the best piece of environmental action that could happen. As you say, Asia compensates for any reductions in the West. The Rationalist take is to use all means possible to force Asia to follow Western regulations, tarrifs on cheap Chinese good flooding Western markets are a very good way to force that change.
Credit where it is due: the Biden admins de minimis reforms are also a good step in this direction. Now if we could just renegotiate the UPU treaties that make it 400% more expensive to ship a brick across Smalltown USA than from mainland China, we'd really be making progress.
TeknOShEeP
7hr ago
But the old Movement is 100% gone.
Good? The old movement already lost twice to Obama, and then to Trump in the primary. It is non-viable in the current political environment, and any forseeable future environment, as the Republican party, at least. The National Review and David French can wail and gnash their teeth on the daily until the cows come home, but the world has changed, and they need to deal with that fact.
TeknOShEeP
14d ago
$1400 a year... deep-pocketed anchor customer willing to guarantee the bills get paid
Airlines (United and Hawaiian air have deals), Starlink is $10k per month per airframe, and cruise lines at $5k per month. Combined with other corporate operators (biz jets, oil platforms, etc) all of whom are frigging starved for reliable high speed internet in-transit and on remote locations, frankly Starlink is going to be printing money in exponentially increasing volumes.
TeknOShEeP
24d ago
No. The waste byproducts of nuclear energy are, by both volume and mass trivially small. You will see about 1/4 of the way down that link the waste products of 28 years of commercial reactor operation, this is immediately followed by the note that 97% of those waste products are recyclable. You can also see the lifespan of the remaining 3%, the truly nasty stuff that spews hard gamma radiation- 600 years. In 600 years, the nastiest, most lethal chunks of spent nuclear fuel have decayed to a sufficient degree that by current federal law you would require no protection to handle them, you could simply pick them up with your bare hands.
So, while 600 years is not nothing, its also not the "millenia and millenia" of danger that alarmist propaganda spews.
TeknOShEeP
1mo ago
The eternal struggle of the rich Marxist...
I dunno, this one is just one more on the list of "times FdB almost got it, but stopped just short of the obvious conclusion." The people being criticized here are, to a statistically significant degree, all rich, urban leftists. Freddy is also a rich, urban leftist who writes exellent articles taking 95% of the piss out of a group he knows very well, but that last 5% will not happen until he realizes the system he supports is the same one he criticizes.
I see a similar tone, though not so close to almost getting it, in many of Scotts SSC and ACT writings. I predict the "are we the baddies" meme has a bright future.
TeknOShEeP
1mo ago
The best description of Toronto I've heard is that its a city that "thinks its the equal of New York, but in reality is less then half of a Chicago". I would have judged this an unfair critique until I met a bunch of people from Toronto, all of whom thought that I should have been impressed by their status as denizens of the aforementioned metro area (in fairness, New Yorkers and Londoners do this too, and are just as mad when I do not ask for their recommendations for the most up to date and hip spots in town, but in theory there are places in NYC and LON that i would want to visit, Toronto has no such saving grace). I guess I don't connect with people who are boosters for their home city, and that seems to be a large percentage of Torontians.
TeknOShEeP
2mo ago
The loss ratio for title insurance includes all of the legal and administrative fees necessary to resolve the claim, up to and including straight up reimbursement. So yes, the sevarity of a valid claim is quite high, its just that claims are incredibly rare. I would also point out that compared to most other types of insurance, the overhead for title insurance is very, very low.
I dont think the argument is that title insurance shouldnt exist, its that the price has been spiked by absurb multiples due to effective collusion of the providers and their related industry contacts, and that property buyers are less aware of this price gouging due to the peculiar nature of real estate transactions.
No. Regardless, you will still have to purchase title insurance for any financed transaction, which is according to the numbers, the biggest scam in the insurance industry.
To save you a click, title insurance has a loss ratio of around 5%, which corresponds to a roughly 20x markup. Contrast this with say fire insurance, which has a 65% loss ratio (ie the insurer expects to pay out 65 cents in claims for every dollar they collect in premiums), automotive of 75%, and homeowners of 82%.
TeknOShEeP
2mo ago
After owning many expensive and high tech raincoats, I've concluded they are a scam. Waterproof + breatheable is simply a contradiction in terms, no matter how much fancy GoreTex you use in the construction. Better coats will last a bit longer before soaking through, but they all soak through eventually. Better coats will let your sweat out a bit better, for a bit longer, before becoming saturated and soaking you in your sweat. The single most important factor is how many vents the jacket has, and how well they work. There seems to be little correlation between price and vent quality.
If you dont want to get wet, bring an umbrella. If you dont want to get wet from rain, but dont mind getting sweaty, then a poncho or trash bag works great, as do cheap non-breatheable waterproof jackets that are basically just a solid plastic shell (like the traditional bright yellow ones).
TeknOShEeP
3mo ago
What would you have me do?
Be consistent. If you say you dont treat black people as a monolithic block, then don't. Recognize that those who shriek about the lack of cap on black are happily assuming they are all interchangeable persons who share exactly the same cultural experiences based solely on their skin color.
It would appear that this decision made by the AP wasn't just something they decided out-of-the-blue.
Correct, and if they hadn't omitted the four words "with our news room" after "consultation" it would be an entirely accurate and honest statement. That absense manages to suggest that this policy is something other than a lily-livered, vibe-checking, virtue signal without directly stating it, but if you are familiar with the particular dialect of urban leftoid journo-bullshit spoken by the AP its meaning is clear enough: "we can't be bothered to explore the nuances of African-American, or African-African" (fucking LOL to that!) "cultural, ethnic, tribal, or economic groupings, and hope our fellow guilt-ridden whiteys will reconize this noble gesture rids us of the need to actually clarify our identifiers, because frankly we're too cowardly and lazy to do that."
Race isn't a monolith... white people... Black people
Oh really?
I dont think I can recall a more transparently racist, or at least racially monolithic movement than this particular push by the swap creatures infesting the halls of Big Journalism than this particular quirk. We must always capitalize "Black" to denote their universally shared identity and experiences, but "white" people are normal, default, boring individualists who dont share a common identity? Thats not me exaggerating, thats straight from the AP Style guide. Its tranparently divisive and racist, and also hilariously ignorant of ethnic relations within Africa proper.
If you want me to believe you dont see race as a monolith, dont treat it like one. Assuming all black people share experiences because of their skin color is peak whitey guilt.
TeknOShEeP
3mo ago
Its a good line, but its completely sabotaged by being surrounded by the paragraphs upon paragraphs of racial and gender grievences her speechwriters love to use. If you are going to talk about unburdening America from what has been, then you have to actually do that.
I actually think Kamala could be a somewhat decent speaker if she immediately fires all of her current speechwriters and hires the most cynical, chain-smoking, philandering, mercenary, SOB writer she can find in DC. She can't do "starry-eyed idealist", she can do "jaded cop stepping into the top job when her city needs her".
TeknOShEeP
3mo ago
Not really- gangs work like armies in microcosm. Theres plenty of people who do things like logistical support (ie transporting narcotics, guns, and fellow gang members) and administrative work (even drug dealers need some sort of accountants, and babysitting offspring is a non-trivial challenge), and a relatively small number of infrantry/grunts/bangers who are on the "front lines". It may not be obvious to outsiders, but gang members and associates certainly know who is most likely to be involved in violence.
Plus Rolex is the poor man's idea of a high end watch brand. Their stuff is overpriced
Vicious propaganda spread by AP, Patek, and RM fans. It is perhaps more correct to say Rolex is a rich man's idea of a "blue collar" brand. In horology circles, Rolex is the Toyota Camry: economical, ubiquitous, not particularly flashy (compared to other options) or complicated (in the horological sense), and the high end models are mostly a silly joke and a waste of money. But your basic-bitch Submariners, Explorers, and GMT masters remain about the single most accurate, reliable, and abuse-tolerant mechanical watches sold today.
One of these things is not like the others.
In my very blue west coast city, the visible homeless are without exception all three of those things. We have a huge number of programs that will get anyone experiencing "homeless-by-misfortune" off the streets and into stable housing in under 24 hours. Those who decline such services do so because they do not allow you to commit numerous property crimes to fund your meth and fentanyl addiction and remain in your taxpayer-funded living situation.
The social safety net put in place to help fundamentally decent people who have been rendered destitute throughthe vaugeries of fate (God's Poor, to borrow the phrase of an earlier age) works. It really does. The problem is our bums are the Devil's Poor- complete shitheads who have burned every bridge in their lives and care only for their own sensations, fuck anyone else. They do not want help or redemption, and mistaking the latter for the former is the very simple answer for why the "homeless" problem has exploded recently. It's not a homeless problem, it's a shithead problem.
TeknOShEeP
6mo ago
Oops, posting too late at night. But yes, ze Germans are a weird lot politically speaking.
TeknOShEeP
6mo ago
Really? Just before the Ukraine invasion, 50ish% of German natural gas came from Russia, accouting for roughly 25% of their total energy generation capacity, not to mention roughly a third of their oil (not counting other Russian allies). They laughed at Trump when he told them they were too reliant on Russian energy. Short of rejigging their economy to be entirely reliant on the Russian hydrocarbon teat, I cant think of a deeper national slumber.
It surprises me not in the slightest it took a war to (sort of) wake German political leadership to the dangers of their energy strategy- they are the same idiots who shut down their domestic nuclear power industry at the demand of uneducated Green Party morons, only to a) buy French nuclear power anyway, and b) mine a shit load more coal to make up for the shortfalls.
The post-war German political establishment is propped up only by the competence of their manufacturing sector, and as that slice of the economy falls under increasing strain, there appears to be a turbulent future in the offing.
TeknOShEeP
7mo ago
The electoral reality in the US is that many states have a history of very overtly disenfranchising certain kinds of voter. This colors basically everything about electoral reform in the US.
Other nations have far more recent and far worse histories of this sorts of behavior, and yet manage to pass reform just fine.
The blunt truth is voter ID laws in this day and age are going to disenfranchise almost exclusively elderly rural people who managed to get along without an ID their entire life. The hypothetical poor urban dweller that blue tribers wave around is virtually guaranteed to be on some sort of public assistance which requires ID to collect. Or is not actually eligible to vote, possibly to their surprise but not to the ballot harvesters who knock on their doors.
Anyone who deeply cares about mandatory voter ID and is really worried about vote fraud is already a die-hard conservative.
I live in a very blue city, and my very blue friends are expressing increasing frustration and skepticism with our local elections, because there are absolutely shennanigans going on, to the point that one went on an hour long rant about ballot harvesting the homeless community she works with, because many of the homeless are being paid for their ballots and its causing overdoses. No, i have no personal evidence for this claim, and yes its illegal as fuck, but i have no reason to doubt my friend and it jives with the genral politics of the city. Voter ID truly has become a universal issue, which is why i have nothing but contempt for GOP failures to do something about it.
TeknOShEeP
7mo ago
Yeah, voter ID is a ridiculously low bar that the GOP should be able to hammer home, but the fact that they cant speaks volumes to their weakness/idiocy.
I'm in the UK at the moment, and there are posters everywhere reminding people to bring their photo ID to vote. India manages to give free, mandatory voter IDs to its population. For literally the rest of the planet, voter ID is a uncontroversial requirement. The fact that Democrats push against it so heavily when there are many more apparently lucrative applications to spend political capital on has turned me into a bit of a conspiracy nut about voting integrity.
Yes, reducing hull temperatures to background levels would be an essential component of minimizing IR signature, but this is something we do today on things like telescopes to avoid thermal distortions, its not even sci-fi tech. And highly expanded exhaust nozzles with cryogenic final exhaust temperatures are again already something that exists for simple efficiency reasons.
I think the "there is no stealth in space" meme comes from the fact that at least to public knowledge, no one has tried to build a stealthy spacecraft so there is no countervailing data to present against detector technology, wheres terrestrial stealth technologies (such as vs radar) has popped up almost as quickly as the detectors did.
Is your novel out? Im always looking for more good reading material.
TeknOShEeP
9mo ago
Ah, yeah that sounds like something not particularly stealthy, unless there is some very fancy nozzle tech going on.
The Voyager example is cited alot as some sort of definitive proof, but misses the obvious point that emissions controls (EMCON) on radio frequency emissions have been a means of avoiding detection since shortly after the first RDF equipment was invented, and the navies and air forces of the world have practiced its use for nearly a century at this point. A 20 watt RF emission is infinitely stonger than a non-existent one after all. The great thing about a vaccum is there are no pesky particles to scatter lasers, which means laser LOS communication is quite easy, and i would imagine become the default for military operations.
RE lasers as radiators- the basic recipe for a laser is to convert an incoherent form of radiation to a coherent form, with some transformation losses of energy. These tranaformation losses are usually waste heat, but if you are beaming a massive amount of IR radiation away, your thermal energy delta is negative. Gas dynamic lasers are a good example- they can arc weld quarter inch steel plate at a hundred miles in a fraction of a second, and the lasing mechanism itself becomes only slightly warm to the touch. There is definitely no free lunch in terms of energy generation, but since the problem you are trying to solve is an energy surplus rather than a defecit, thats not a particularly big deal. The simplest setup would involve a a solid state IR laser enveloped by a cooling mechanism which is in turn coupled to some form of thermionic converter that is the actual power source for the laser. This makes for what is effectively a laser refrigerator of not particularly great efficiency, but still capable of cooling a spacecraft while emitting only coherent radiation.
There is not a whole lot of literature on the subject, mostly because lasers dont make very efficient radiators and the only immediately plausible applications are all military in nature, but there is no thermodynamic prohibition on it. See: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19660023147 for the genral efficiency calculations.
The FTL interaction with stealth is definitely an interesting one, I find the way its portrayed in the Honor Harrington series to be good, essentially concluding that in a universe with relatavistic ships and weaponry anything moving in classical mechanic terms is stealthy because the light cone of detection is slow relative to the application of deadly force.
TeknOShEeP
9mo ago
Ooo, looks interesting.
"The no-stealth-in-space" principle isnt totally violated.
Which is a shame, because that "principle" needs to be violated, since it simply isn't true. I love Project Rho as much as any sci-fi nerd, but the entire "no stealth in space" article boils down to a claim that it is trivially easy to deploy and coordinate sufficient numbers of sufficiently sensitive IR sensor platforms around any given system that any incoherent IR emissions from malicious spacecraft can be detected, picked out of all of the other emissions that are around, interpreted as a hostile craft, all in a reasonable timeframe. This to me is a significantly high dose of handwavium critically compromised by such facts as: IR emissions need not be incoherent- IR lasers are very much a thing and can make (admittedly not particularly efficient) closed-loop radiators, and also liquid hydrogen propellent happens to make one heck of a good heat sink which by the way can be expanded in a rocket nozzle to background-cryogenic temperatures whose IR emissions are indistinguishable from all the other hydrogen atoms bouncing around.
TeknOShEeP
11mo ago
Ironically your comment proves him right. Quaritch himself may lack the scientific background to ask the question you just have, but assuming your user ID is accurate, other humans are curious enough to ask just such a question and ponder the consequences.
2 is the best option, you'll notice that everyone from amateur streamers to professional e-sports teams use it even when sitting right next to each other. The same is true for any team doing anything remotely high performance even if everyone is sitting in the same room- ie NASA mission control, military command centers, Formula 1 race teams, etc.
We use microphones and join a voice chat together on Discord or something. The problem with this is that we can still hear each other's voices in the physical world, so then the microphones' delay causes a double perception which is quite confusing and jarring.
You have a latency issue. The problem is not your microphones, or even likely your PCs, but Discord, which is notorious for (among many other things) terrible voice chat latency. Try Teamspeak or Mumble, which are specifically designed to be low-latency.
Reagan did some great things, and genuinely had a vision for the future. He also left office more than a third of a century ago. Bush Sr. is notable pretty much only for beating up on a couple of tinpot dictators and largely failing on the domestic front. Bush Jr is notable for being completely eclipsed by his VP, embracing the idiot wing of the GOP, finishing up his daddies work in the most expensive fashion possible, and entangling the nation in a festering quagmire of a war that wouldnt succeed in its objective of killing one guy until the next president and genrally being an enormous suck of lives and treasure; domestically he passed a terrible education bill and a few minor tax cuts while overseeing the regulatory idiocy that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
None of this is worth celebrating- good riddance to it.
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