[–] 2 points 5 days ago* (2 children)

Even this article, despite repeating over and over how we have already crossed the "it's too late" thresholds, ends with a call to action, as if we can still do something about it.

And as long as we go with their mendacious flow, hundreds of millions, and then billions will die well before “Net Zero by 2050” or “our great grandkids’ future” arrive. Because we are out of time. And we need to get to work immediately. There are a million things to do.

What is there to do? Let's say we shut down fossil fuel infrastructure. What goes with it? Fertilizer production, farm equipment, transportation, refrigeration, all the requirements to sustain the lives we worry will be lost due to climate change. Let's replace it with renewables, then. The cost in energy, production, and resources to replace the current world-wide farming, transportation, and energy infrastructure with renewables is somewhere in the high trillions of dollars and who knows how many years (decades) of time to make it happen. Of course we should still try to do it. But it's not going to save us. The damage is already done. The patient is fatally poisoned. We could maybe stop the flow of poison, but they'll still die. The hard pill to swallow here is there is no solution. We've painted ourselves into a corner and we're going to die here. You can blame the oligarch class. They deserve it. But remember how hard it was to do even a partial shutdown during covid? The level of shutdown required to stop poisoning our planet is way more severe than that. It's not going to happen, not willingly. Not until there is literally no way to deny what's happening. And by then it will be far too late.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I think I read that the problems with the Osprey weren't engineering, they were things like since the rotors are so much smaller than a helicopter they have to move a smaller volume of air much faster to provide the same lift, and that can shred landing pads from the force of it, and because the air column moves so fast they put so much dust and debris in the air it can cause visibility issues around the landing site. How will this be any different?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    I love this. It's really practical for a city. Though I'm wondering about the sail idea now on more rural roads. Roads turn this way and that, and the wind shifts. You'd need someone sitting in the thing orienting the sail. I wonder if you made it a little larger with a largish sail and you had a driver on roller blades and a sailor sitting in it catching the wind how fast could you get it going? Depends on the wind, I guess, but a boat probably has more friction in the water and sailboats go pretty fast.

    Ooh, maybe you could add an outrigger, a pole that slides left and right with a wheel on either side, to keep it from tipping.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I think the issue is most people don't understand what an LLM is doing. It's not thinking about your question and finding the right answer. It is just doing a bunch of math to calculate the most probable response based on all it's training plus or minus some minor random variation. If your question could be answered by a thorough Google search then an llm can probably give you a good answer. If it's about something you're not going to find on the internet then the LLM will just make up something that sounds convincing. And that's the problem. It may sound convincing but it's a con man.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    Of course it's a lie. Everything he says is a lie. But this wasn't because he couldn't find help. This was because the credible Iranian threat of bombing every oil field in the middle east was enough to get someone (the US oligarchs?) to tell him to back off. They know that if the oil stops flowing everything will collapse and they will loose billions. It's always about money in the US. The reaction of the stock markets is what seems to matter most. And honestly I don't care why he's turning around. If he pulled out entirely and said it's because God told him to I'd be delighted. Just stop the madness, please.

    Then again, it is also possible this is just the well-worn US/Israeli tactic of "can we have a cease fire to restock our weapon supplies?"

    And to my original point, there are countless reasons he's unfit for the job, and a sickening waste of a human being, but any sign of backing away from this disaster is a good thing, not something to criticize.

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  • [–] -5 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    Really? Chickened out? Are you hoping for the collapse of the entire global economy? Food shortages? Is that what having conviction looks like? This is the first even slightly hopeful sign I've seen in this whole shit show. A better title would be 'Trump finally tries to pull back from armageddon'

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    Well, it's harder in a lot of ways. But it's not that bad. Using healing magic (even potions) comes at a cost. Most other magic is fine and has no drawback. There are other ways to heal though. Food heals a lot more but only works outside of combat. Shouts are now memories and there is one that steals health from defeated enemies. And there are other ways it is harder. Learning comes not from experience, but from books that you buy. Enemies don't scale. They are fixed level at various places in the world. It's a huge mod though with a great story and definitely worth playing.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    I've always wondered if that had something to do with the cultural revolution in China in the late '60s early '70s. Like was there something about living in or before that time that made you look older as you aged? And maybe the people born well after that time just weren't under that kind of stress and ended up looking younger.

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