I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it.
I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices.
Is it though? For developing countries, having a large supply of fossil fuels has always been a huge accelerator for industrialization and overall economic growth even if that fuel has to be imported. There really is no substitute, especially when you consider that it's not used only for transportation and power generation but also for manufacturing as an industrial heat source and chemical feed stock.
The cheapest mix of reliable power is 95% solar/battery and 5% natural gas. And that's in the US with its cheap gas and poor insolation. In the third world it'll be much higher than 95%.
Solar energy is cheaper than oil right now. On average. Too bad it's highly variable but if you can cope with extreme variability you can get extremely cheap energy.
Pretty tough to cope with variability if you want to build a modern industrial economy. I mean even with cheap labor it kind of kills your cost structure when capital intensive facilities have to shut down due to electricity shortage. Plus there are plenty of industrial processes that require fossil fuels as inputs separate from just electricity.
fossil fuels were a proxy for energy. China continues to show the world that energy independence can come via electricity that you generate within your borders, and that it can be cheaper than importing foreign oil.
Right, that's exactly the point. Regardless of the consequences, worldwide fossil fuel consumption will continue increasing. Those stable organic molecules with energy rich chemical bonds are so damn useful for everything that enables modern industrial civilization and there is no substitute.
No, plastic usage world wide is less than 10% of fossil fuel usage. Only in China can the plastic increase compensate for lowering demand because they are the factory of the world.
I don't understand your argument. You agree they're increasing coal use? Besides, anyone wanting to know the state of coal use just needs to go to Youtube, search "Bejing" or "Delhi" air quality and ample evidence of what's happening and the effects will come forward in 1000 different voices.
A comparison of Beijing air quality between 2020 and 2025 will show drastic differences -- it's gotten much better.
China's coal usage is relatively flat. They've increased their capacity, but they've been decreasing their capacity factor (aka what percentage of the time the plants are running) at approximately the same rate. They used to run their plants 24/7. Now they run only at night. They've started adding batteries to the grid so in the future the coal plants will only run after a stretch of cloudy days.
The data I'm finding says that it's still increasing, especially in India. They expect it to start dropping in 2028-2030 due to the buildouts you're mentioning but for now that isn't happening.
Claim is that it's about strategic safety for both countries. Coal is easy, and they have plenty of it (unlike oil, which neither have in any quantity).
They're doing both solar and coal because of security. They're doing 5X as much solar than they are of coal because solar is cheaper. They're doing the coal because the need something for the night. But now that batteries are becoming cheaper than coal for that, they'll do more batteries and less coal.
Trump is implementing multi decade right wing fantasies in many fronts. The idea that we can't achieve anything is limiting yourself when you're in a political arena. To win, like Trump, when you get power you have to attack on many fronts, cultural, capital, legal, and approach it as a zero sum scorched earth war where norms are another obstacle in your way.
Right, the definition should reflect general usage. Did the general usage here just coincidentally change days after a Republican appointee used a word in a hearing? That’s a heck of a coincidence! No, what happened was that liberals used their control over putatively neutral institutions like M-W to advance their position in a political dispute.
Perhaps a more effective approach would be for their users to face the exact same legal liabilities as if they had hand-written such messages?
(Note that I'm only talking about messages that cross the line into legally actionable defamation, threats, etc. I don't mean anything that's merely rude or unpleasant.)
This is the only way, because anything less would create a loophole where any abuse or slander can be blamed on an agent, without being able to conclusively prove that it was actually written by an agent. (Its operator has access to the same account keys, etc)
But as you pointed, not everything has legal liability. Socially, no, they should face worse consequences. Deciding to let an AI talk for you is malicious carelessness.
Alphabet Inc, as Youtube owner, faces a class action lawsuit [1] which alleges that platform enables bad behavior and promotes behavior leading to mental health problems.
In my not so humble opinion, what AI companies enable (and this particular bot demonstrated) is a bad behavior that leads to possible mental health problems of software maintainers, particularly because of the sheer amount of work needed to read excessively lengthy documentation and review often huge amount of generated code. Nevermind the attempted smear we discuss here.
just put no agent produced code in the Code of Conduct document. People are use to getting shot into space for violating that thing little file. Point to the violation and ban the contributor forever and that will be that.
I’d hazard that the legal system is going to grind to a halt. Nothing can bridge the gap between content generating capability and verification effort.
Yea, in this world the cryptography people will be the first with their backs against the wall when the authoritarians of this age decide that us peons no longer need to keep secrets.
I had a similar experience with the Providence Journal Bulletin some years back.
I subscribed out of a general desire to support good journalism, but it did nothing to reduce the deluge of online ads.
I can't entirely fault them though. They might not have had enough market info at the time to justify making a reduced-ads variant of their website for subscribers.
I had a bulging lumbar disc - pure agony for 18 months. I had become used to carrying a lumbar pillow around with me everywhere I went. I couldn't lean forward for more than about 30 seconds without it being unbearable.
Then someone suggested I try dead hangs, stretching my hamstrings, and really cranking the McKenzie stretch. I'm not sure which one made the difference (all 3?), but pain was gone in 2 weeks.
Maybe it will help, maybe it won't. But since someone took a flyer telling me, I always share this with others in the small chance it helps them.
Deadlifts are how I got into that mess. There are two types of deadlifter: those who have ruined their back, and those who haven't yet ruined their back.
Romanian deadlifts are much safer. Also hip thrusts and weighted back extensions are good enough unless you're a competitive power lifter.
I always followed proper form and didn't ego lift, even though my deadlifts were the highest weight.
I think on retrospect deadlifts may have been my issue to, I did the deadlifts that day and later remember going to pickup something off the ground and getting the issue. Not sure if the deadlift was the cause, but I always thought my muscles were sore/tired and lax, thus when I went to lift the thing my lower back stability was compromised.
I'll try Romanian deadlifts and those other exercises, thanks for that suggestion.
For the McKenzie stretch (https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e556aadfe97d3...), instead of just holding the stretch, do reps between laying flat and then going into the stretch. At the end of your final rep (I would do 8), rotate side to side gently when arched.
Dead hangs: hang from a bar for 30 seconds, completely relaxed. Then 1 minute of rest. Repeat 3 times. This decompresses your spine.
It's a miracle drug for reducing immune overreach, like better than anything we know of. This is also completely outside of the weight loss effects. My lower back is improved by it.
It'll come to be known that these drugs are far better for people in a broad way than even thought today. They seem to have at least 4 effects that individually should be considered a "miracle."
My wife has had an autoimmune disease that’s caused inflammation for years. Absolutely terrible back pain. She had to rent a motorized scooter when we went to Disney World, and could barely walk a few hundred feet before having to stop and rest for years.
Last year she started Zepbound (tirzepatide) and the inflammation went away, we went to Disney World again and she walked happily all day. Absolutely life changing. She didn’t even lose much weight and this was at the lowest dose.
Tirzepatide specifically seems especially beneficial, likewise here. Years of slowly increasing symptoms since I was young, lifelong annoying issues, basically all gone on it. And also not overweight at all, I take below lowest dose and skip most weeks now that it's under control.
I know you're getting a lot of "this worked for me" responses and I wanted to throw one more in. I used to have lower back problems all the time, but after following a strength training program for the olympic lifts with a personal trainer, generally the only time I have lower back pain now is if I've gone too hard to deadlifts or rows, not from general day to day things.
I have a bad disc, and while its still bad, a couple weeks of freestyle swimming workouts makes it not hurt for a year or two and lets me mountain bike comfortably again. Something to try if the usual stuff doesn't work, as it tends not to!
This was the disc between lumbar and sacrum. 1,000 ways to have a bad disc so results will vary a lot!
I'm still amazed by how you got ships to usually fly in formation, but also behave independently and rationally when that made sense.
That game was a magnificent piece of art. It set a unique and immersive vibe on par with the original Tron movie. I'm really glad I have a chance now to tell you.
Amen to this. The optimization the team did blows my mind… whenever I think of it I think of if someone made Crysis run on the NES without compromises.
The soundtrack was stellar, and introduced me to Barber (Adagio for Strings).
Thanks... It was magical at the time... I've thought a lot about why it was magical over the years... I think if you boil away all the space stuff, Homeworld was a story about people who knew in their hearts that they were special and destined for something greater than the universe was willing to allow. And they went through hell to discover that they were right. Looking back, I think that's a story a lot of us on this thread (inc. me) can relate to.
It doesn’t even matter anymore, being anything less than a full citizen puts you at risk. In my community, we have a bunch of Nepalese people whose TPS is going to expire and they are going to be deported. Not far away is Springfield, where a community of Haitians, who are mostly liked by the people in their community, and who even the Republican governor is asking the administration not to deport, have seen their TPS expire.
There are a lot of non-criminals who are here legally, but still very concerned about their future. If I were one of the Haitians in Springfield, I would be looking for another country to take me in.
Every one of them are legal permanent residents who don't feel welcome here anymore. Some are afraid they're one mistaken identity away from ending up black bagged and sent to El Salvador.
I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it.
I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices.
I hope I'm wrong.