If you're a reader of slashdot, you probably think we should live on fucking Mars, so stop being such a pussy about people moving to Arizona. We will figure it out with technology. I really hate defeatists who are like "Waaaa, Nature does not want people to live in the desert (or fly, or leave the caves)" How about asking instead: How can we find a way to live really comfortably in a desert?
There are many ways to live comfortably in a desert. People can also live comfortably in cold places. But unless this project is completely different than other modern desert towns, that isn't how people will choose to live.
I've pointed out that people who moved to Arizona for allergy problems planted the same plants that they were allergic to back home, and successfully watered the crap out of them. Point is, they want the warmth and the sunshine, and all of the things they had back home. I haven't seen anything yet to convince me otherwise.
If you are going to sustainably live in a desert, you need to use what the desert provides.
I Hot weather is tough for sure, but having some bottled water and a shirt to avoid burns, it is relatively easy to avoid death and injury. So, people are well accustomed to living in even harsher climates.
If they live in the manner that the environment encourages. So many of the people who move to these places have no intention of living the desert lifestyle. I remember when my father in law moved to Florida. He Bought a refrigerater/freezer specially to put flower bulbs that need cold weather to set, like tulips. And amazing to me, after moving to Florida, they almost never went outside. My Sister moved to Phoenix AZ, same issue, and she was in her thirties when she moved. 5 years and she was back. Basically they traded nice weather in the winter for Nature trying to kill you in the summer. Here in PA We only have maybe a month and a half of hard winter. You obviously have more.
But, I've been in Ontario and Quebec in the summer, and it's heavenly. Ottawa in the summer is super nice, and I went to Winterlude in Ottawa once, and it's a bit of a different world then.
We will terraform Mars. It will be what the first travelers want it to be.
It will be a constant battle as the solar wind strips the atmosphere away.
Possibly. Or possibly we may set up an artificial magnetosphere. There are actually some practical methods for doing it. It would be a major project, of course. One proposal is an equatorial superconducting loop, Another is a giant electromagnet at a Lagrange point (trouble with that one is that, every time I hear about it, I wonder how much thrust the deflected solar wind would generate. Going by the numbers I can find for magnetic sails, a magnetic "bubble" of 100 km diameter would produce 70 Newtons of thrust at 1 AU. So, it would be about 30 Newtons at about Mars distance from the sun. The bubble for protecting mars would need to be at least as big as Mars, and probably about 50% bigger. So it would need to be 10,168.5 km in diameter, and would have a cross sectional area (facing the sun) of 81,208,838 sq km. So, that would be 10,340 times the cross section of the 100 km bubble, so it would be about 310.2 kN of force (basically 31 tons of force). That's quite a lot, but the equipment to produce such a field would have to be quite massive, so that wouldn't send it instantly hurtling into the outer solar system. It might be possible to keep it relatively stationary by putting it in a "virtual" Lagrange point where the push from the solar wind keeps it locked to the actual Lagrange point. Maybe a solar sail array could even be used to help keep it in position.
Yes - I forgot about the Lagrange point electromagnet scenario. That would probably work, and certainly isn't the biggest technical issue.
All shortages these days are only caused by a disagreement over the price.
That is kinda important. Even more important is the will to allow the import, and in the end, availability.
The western States have sucked the Colorado River dry. There's no wiggle room.
So now, Cali is looking toward Oregon to tap into the Columbia River. There has even been dreams of diverting Great Lakes water to the west. For some reason, the people in those areas are not terribly excited about the idea. And now they are talking about getting water from Alaska.
So these people have looked at what we did to the Colorado River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and say they want no part of shipping their water off to the Southwest to water lawns and golf courses, build fountains, and grow almonds. http://www.motherjones.com/env...
Yet we grow Most of those crops mentioned in the Mother Jones article here in the Northeast (almond and Pistachio excluded) with no irrigation at all.
"why move to an area when all you want to do is alter the environment to something the environment isn't."
In other words, do what people have been doing since forever. You central planning types are too early, come back next century when your consciousness can be uploaded and you can exist in perfectly planned nirvana.
I think what happens iin these cases though is that people use a small set of desires. If someone wants to live in a desert, and has wanderlust and wants the experience, by all means. I love the stark beauty of much of the American Southwest.
But Joe Blow, who retires and wants warmth and a change of pace isn't being adventurous. He moves to Phoenix or Miami, then tries to make it over. Arizona used to be the place where people with allergeies were suggested to live. NOw places like Tuscon now have more than double the incidence of asthma and hay fever than the nation as a whole.
How did such a thing happen? Those stupid assholes that moved here to escape the allergens brought the same damn plants they were allergic to and popped 'em in the ground, watered the hell out of them so they would survive, and made Arizona about th elast place an allergy sufferer would want to be.
Wanderlust and the human urge to explore is about the best quality of humanity. Retiring to a warm place is the opposite of that.
Perhaps I've not kept up to date with the current state of the art in photovoltaics, but when did solar cells start requiring water in their sunlight->electricity conversion process?
I should have phrased that better.
Solar provided electricity - or any electricity doesn't do crap for AC in arid environments unless there is water to use in the process. Here in the humid Northeast, we use compressor AC because it works better the higher the humidity.
In the desert, with little humidity to remove, the AC of choice is called the swamp cooler, which relies on the evaporation of water to cool the air. But you have to have water to evaporate to cool the air.
It isn't the electricity, it's the impending lack of water,
Human body temperature is 100F/37C.
Both in summer as in winter 70/21 is to cold for me.
I actualy avoid AC like a plague, I can not understand why people cool down houses/offices so far that you need to wear a suit to be able to tollerate it.
My SO likes the temps at least 75, I can't stand anything over 70. There is a fellow I know, who is around 75 years old, and he keeps his place at 85 degrees. I'm always amazed at the different Range of temps that people prefer.
Or you use water smartly and not waste it. Sure you have to truck some in now and again, but if they're envisioning a next-generation "smart city", smart water use would also be a part of it.
But most people don't want to conserve in that manner.
Our daily lives we waste enough water to make any third world country cry. Watering lawns is practically a complete waste of water unless you are using it wisely as a filter medium for example.
It depends on where you are located. Here in the rainy Northeast, we worry a hella lot more about floods than we do about running out of water. I water my lawn, and it doesn't make a difference. No one is harmed, and no one goes without. There is no point in conserving water unless we are experiencing a rare drought.
And since it isn't practical to pipe it to the places where water is in short supply, we might as well just use it
Lots of sunlight also means cheap solar stills for water purification.
And I'm sure Gates has considered the water issue. In fact, he may have bought it because of that - with climate changing, the real issue IS going to be access to water.
And those solar stills aren't going to supply enough water for a city unless all the water is going to sustain life and precious little else-at best. The Dune books and their stillsuits make fascinating reading, but it's hard to imagine most people dealing with the problem.
(We are relatively fortunate in North America as we have almost half of the world's reserve of freshwater).
It could be a very smart play - get the technology used to recycle and conserve water working now, so when its really needed, you've just cornered the market in patents, and the technology has matured to be usable, while everyone else is scrambling to find fixes.
Or people could just live where the basics to sustain life already are. Here in the Northeast, we don't have to worry about dying if the solar still quits working.
I'm really interested in how they plan to deal with the water issue, it seems like a show-stopper. Maybe they can build something to recover water from the dry arid air - because otherwise they're going to have to pipe it in, and the Colorado River is already over used... They must have considered this issue when they bought the dry desert land...
They aren't going to be able to do that, and there are some presumed cheap ways to extract water from the air, but they just cannot provide enough water on a city scale. If this smart city is to live within the desert conditions, and not just be another drain on the overwhelmed Colorado river, people there will have to learn to exist in some pretty hot temperatures in the daytime,cold at night, a massive reduction in the number of showers that Americans are used to, extreme water conservation, and a standard of living that will keep most of us away. The only thing missing will be the spice.
It is also dumb for another reason: 90% of the water in Phoenix goes to water lawns. So just build the new city without grass, and use xeriscaping instead. Problem solved.
Because people like their lawns, and their golf courses and fountains and ponds and swimming pools and daily showers.
It's the "I want it all" syndrome. Make the people exist in the actual environment, and with the actual amount of water that the environment provides, and the number of people that select to live there will plummet. Here in the green rainy northeast, we hardly think about water until it reaches flood stage.But that's why the predominant color is green. But it gets uncomfortably humid in the summer, and cold in the winter, so some folks want to move to the warm places. But they still want the good stuff which takes water. And they sure as hell don't want that 120 degree summer temperature, so they spend their days in the house using the swamp cooler. which takes water.
If the desert was easy for a lot of people to live in comfortably, there would be a lot of people living there already in the native conditions.
Water is probably the bigger problem, I think the GP is being overly optimistic, I would like to see a system that condenses enough water from the desert air to feed a small city. Not saying it can't be done, but I'd like to see it first.
I know a place that condensed so much water from the air that in the end they flooded the entire place. There's a bad side to this story though, the place was full of warlords fighting for a spice of some kind.
Everyone's got an argument where 'plenty of solar power' solves each of the myriad problems of living in a sun-baked desert. The far easier solution is not to live in a sun baked desert.
Humans really like temperatures around 70 F/21 C. Solar power in the desert doesn't work very well unless there is water to evaporate. There you tend to need the "swamp cooler" type AC.
I'm a big fan of solar power. But to provide cooling in the desert, it's best use is being under the panels in the shade they throw.
As the population of humans on the planet continues to grow, it will becomes increasingly necessary to move into and settle regions previously considered inhospitable.
New Jersey is not that bad.
Digressing here, but New Jersey is a state of incredible contrasts. The northern part is "which exit you live at" land, and the one most people think of. Urban AF. Then going south it becomes pine forests and a lot less population density, finally ending in Cape May, which is exceptionally different.
And in the meantime, they somehow produce enough food to support Chris Christie, and you know that can't be easy.
All the critics here who are chorussing "oh, Gates is so stupid, he doesn't know that Arizona is uninhabitable" are silly: we already know it's possible because 1.6 million people already live there.
Cool story bro, except it isn't that the desert is uninhabitable, it's that there are limits and you are pressing them. While your real estate brochure version of living in the desert is cool, it seems to assume that there will always be plenty of water, plenty of air conditioning, and will be just like living in 70 degrees all year round - perfect comfort.
And it's sort of funny - why move to an area when all you want to do is alter the environment to something the environment isn't.
As the population of humans on the planet continues to grow, it will becomes increasingly necessary to move into and settle regions previously considered inhospitable.
Learning to live in new environs is what resourceful life does when it refuses to die and depopulate at the edge of the Petri dish.
If we cannot figure out how to live (and eventually thrive) in the earthly atmosphere of the Arizona desert with its excessive heat and limited water, off-planet settlements are the dreams that come from pipes.
Your first sentence gives the answer for the last sentence. The numbers of humans are what makes it difficult.
Humans living in arid places has been done for a long time. Some incredible adaptation has occurred in Africa. But that is humans adapting to the local conditions. People have lived in America's southwest deserts as well, perhaps not as acclimated as Bedouins, but they got by. Even in Death Valley.
The difference is in the numbers. We try to convert the desert to what we think is ideal. We like the grass in our lawns, we like nice water fountains, and we like a lot of people inhabiting these places. This is completely unsustainable.
Going to Mars, it will be a few people, and probably living in containers like domes or maybe even underground. That isn't comparable to trying to turn the Southwest desert into paradise. 10 or 20 people - possible. Millions? Nope.
Who the fuck gave you the authority to speak for all women? Do you personally KNOW this woman? Then don't assume that she "wouldn't be doing it" for whatever bullshit reason YOU can come up with. You don't speak for her and you sure the hell don't speak for me so why don't you take your shitty attitude elsewhere. Damn third gen feminists.
Isn't it amazing? Third wavers have tilted feminism on it's head, effectively describing women as so weak that they are the ultimate victims. That there is no choice that they are capable of making, having been forced into a life of debauchery by those damn members of the patriarchy that sit on the bus with their legs too far apart therefore reinforcing rape culture. A bizzare fugue state of the world's strongest, toughest perennial victims. And becoming more shrill by the moment. I've even seen some stories about "femicide" now. So now men want to eliminate all women from the earth? How's that supposed to work? Kinda takes both sexes to continue the species last time I checked. But I suppose even thinking that is silly and non workable is misogynist for the third wavers.
And in a fit of projection that would make closeted homophobes proud, they throw the Misogynist pejorative around like a Fifth Avenue confetti parade, merely proving who hates who.
A woman who chooses to do this sort of thing is not doing anything illegal, and the main qualifications are wanting to make money, and not being concerned about any negative views. It is her choice, no one else's.
Other people have worked and saved money, then gone to college after a number of years, taken advantage of tuition reduction or elimination programs at work, or even simply used student loans to get an education. In fact, there aren't all that many women who choose to fund their education this way. Most who do are just pragmatic about it. And I'm not going to judge. Seems we have some pretty judgemental types here.
A side note is that a lot of their "customers" are women. https://www.womenshealthmag.co... . Not certain how that plays into the misogynist screeching.
She wouldn't be prostituting herself if it were not for the crippling cost of education. Fuck you misogynist pieces of shit for trying to justify this sexist state of affairs.
What's the matter with you dude? Your incredible stupid tactic of blaming men for this is ridiculous. You know how many women do not pay for their college education by becoming a stripper or a "cam whore"?
Almost every woman who goes to college, that is who. Somehow they manage. So lay off your gaddamned sanctimonious blame shifting, and grow up.
It's naive to believe that it hasn't occurred already. But it's not a defect. It's by design. The defect is in the peoples' consent to their use. If nobody rises up, don't expect things to get any better.
I suspect there is a bit of an uprising going on at the moment.
Not all of the women doing shows are vapid. Some are, but others simply see no harm in taking advantage of being hot, while simultaneously pursuing their long-term goals.
Yes, there are some local ladies who are paying for their education this way. Not my cup of tea, but tI'm not going to judge them. Supply and demand I suppose.
What is really weird is how while liberals had championed acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism (which I have no trouble accepting at all) and many of the more whacked out ones have demanded the ridiculoushundreds of "genders" bullshit, they get outraged by this sort of activity.
I think it needs framed in a way that they will accept. What of a transgendered person who finds their sexual release in running a webcam where they wank for money, and the money is the integral part of the gratification? How dare they pass judgement on them?
We need to add some new genders to the list:
Trans-pecuniary exhibitionist, CISpecuniaryexhibitionist, and maybe a few others.
While that "particular" student may have still been a webcam girl for the easy money, many and probably most only do it out of necessity in order to cover the expenses during a time when working while a full-time student for enough money is tough. So, a significant reduction in the cost of college saves at least these chics.
They ought to have student loans or something.
Seriously, assuming you are a liberal based on the concept that you're promoting the idea that this is a helpless yet strong victim woman who is forced into a life of depravity by the patriarchy, you are simply wrong.
If a woman is of an outlook that she can make money by strutting her stuff on the internet and that it is no problem for her, then she might do that. If she finds that to be unacceptable, she won't. My SO has had offers, and she's just said "No, thank you" and that was the end of it.
This is not a difficult concept unless one has watched too many episodes of Law and Order Special Victims Unit.
Our culture sucks and needs to end. Women forced to prostitute themselves just to get an education. What a shithole we live in.
Who is forcing them? They must have a moral set that allows them to justify this sort of activity.
I don't really care one way or the other if a woman does this or a man engages in this sort of activity with her. As long as it is consenting adults, it is none of my business I do not find the concept of remote control vibrators remotely exciting myself, but would no more pass judgement on her than I would on a person who prefers homosexual sex, or a transgendered person.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're a reader of slashdot, you probably think we should live on fucking Mars, so stop being such a pussy about people moving to Arizona. We will figure it out with technology. I really hate defeatists who are like "Waaaa, Nature does not want people to live in the desert (or fly, or leave the caves)" How about asking instead: How can we find a way to live really comfortably in a desert?
There are many ways to live comfortably in a desert. People can also live comfortably in cold places. But unless this project is completely different than other modern desert towns, that isn't how people will choose to live.
I've pointed out that people who moved to Arizona for allergy problems planted the same plants that they were allergic to back home, and successfully watered the crap out of them. Point is, they want the warmth and the sunshine, and all of the things they had back home. I haven't seen anything yet to convince me otherwise.
If you are going to sustainably live in a desert, you need to use what the desert provides.
I Hot weather is tough for sure, but having some bottled water and a shirt to avoid burns, it is relatively easy to avoid death and injury. So, people are well accustomed to living in even harsher climates.
If they live in the manner that the environment encourages. So many of the people who move to these places have no intention of living the desert lifestyle. I remember when my father in law moved to Florida. He Bought a refrigerater/freezer specially to put flower bulbs that need cold weather to set, like tulips. And amazing to me, after moving to Florida, they almost never went outside. My Sister moved to Phoenix AZ, same issue, and she was in her thirties when she moved. 5 years and she was back. Basically they traded nice weather in the winter for Nature trying to kill you in the summer. Here in PA We only have maybe a month and a half of hard winter. You obviously have more.
But, I've been in Ontario and Quebec in the summer, and it's heavenly. Ottawa in the summer is super nice, and I went to Winterlude in Ottawa once, and it's a bit of a different world then.
We will terraform Mars. It will be what the first travelers want it to be.
It will be a constant battle as the solar wind strips the atmosphere away.
Possibly. Or possibly we may set up an artificial magnetosphere. There are actually some practical methods for doing it. It would be a major project, of course. One proposal is an equatorial superconducting loop, Another is a giant electromagnet at a Lagrange point (trouble with that one is that, every time I hear about it, I wonder how much thrust the deflected solar wind would generate. Going by the numbers I can find for magnetic sails, a magnetic "bubble" of 100 km diameter would produce 70 Newtons of thrust at 1 AU. So, it would be about 30 Newtons at about Mars distance from the sun. The bubble for protecting mars would need to be at least as big as Mars, and probably about 50% bigger. So it would need to be 10,168.5 km in diameter, and would have a cross sectional area (facing the sun) of 81,208,838 sq km. So, that would be 10,340 times the cross section of the 100 km bubble, so it would be about 310.2 kN of force (basically 31 tons of force). That's quite a lot, but the equipment to produce such a field would have to be quite massive, so that wouldn't send it instantly hurtling into the outer solar system. It might be possible to keep it relatively stationary by putting it in a "virtual" Lagrange point where the push from the solar wind keeps it locked to the actual Lagrange point. Maybe a solar sail array could even be used to help keep it in position.
Yes - I forgot about the Lagrange point electromagnet scenario. That would probably work, and certainly isn't the biggest technical issue.
All shortages these days are only caused by a disagreement over the price.
That is kinda important. Even more important is the will to allow the import, and in the end, availability.
The western States have sucked the Colorado River dry. There's no wiggle room.
So now, Cali is looking toward Oregon to tap into the Columbia River. There has even been dreams of diverting Great Lakes water to the west. For some reason, the people in those areas are not terribly excited about the idea. And now they are talking about getting water from Alaska.
So these people have looked at what we did to the Colorado River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and say they want no part of shipping their water off to the Southwest to water lawns and golf courses, build fountains, and grow almonds. http://www.motherjones.com/env...
Yet we grow Most of those crops mentioned in the Mother Jones article here in the Northeast (almond and Pistachio excluded) with no irrigation at all.
"why move to an area when all you want to do is alter the environment to something the environment isn't."
In other words, do what people have been doing since forever. You central planning types are too early, come back next century when your consciousness can be uploaded and you can exist in perfectly planned nirvana.
I think what happens iin these cases though is that people use a small set of desires. If someone wants to live in a desert, and has wanderlust and wants the experience, by all means. I love the stark beauty of much of the American Southwest.
But Joe Blow, who retires and wants warmth and a change of pace isn't being adventurous. He moves to Phoenix or Miami, then tries to make it over. Arizona used to be the place where people with allergeies were suggested to live. NOw places like Tuscon now have more than double the incidence of asthma and hay fever than the nation as a whole.
How did such a thing happen? Those stupid assholes that moved here to escape the allergens brought the same damn plants they were allergic to and popped 'em in the ground, watered the hell out of them so they would survive, and made Arizona about th elast place an allergy sufferer would want to be.
Wanderlust and the human urge to explore is about the best quality of humanity. Retiring to a warm place is the opposite of that.
They'll do it at night. Do I have to do all the thinking round here?
That's why we pay ya the big bucks!
In the modern world a/c uses ammonium for heart Transfer. Closed Loop.
Are you saying that this works in arid environments?
Perhaps I've not kept up to date with the current state of the art in photovoltaics, but when did solar cells start requiring water in their sunlight->electricity conversion process?
I should have phrased that better.
Solar provided electricity - or any electricity doesn't do crap for AC in arid environments unless there is water to use in the process. Here in the humid Northeast, we use compressor AC because it works better the higher the humidity.
In the desert, with little humidity to remove, the AC of choice is called the swamp cooler, which relies on the evaporation of water to cool the air. But you have to have water to evaporate to cool the air.
It isn't the electricity, it's the impending lack of water,
Human body temperature is 100F/37C. Both in summer as in winter 70/21 is to cold for me.
I actualy avoid AC like a plague, I can not understand why people cool down houses/offices so far that you need to wear a suit to be able to tollerate it.
My SO likes the temps at least 75, I can't stand anything over 70. There is a fellow I know, who is around 75 years old, and he keeps his place at 85 degrees. I'm always amazed at the different Range of temps that people prefer.
We will terraform Mars. It will be what the first travelers want it to be.
It will be a constant battle as the solar wind strips the atmosphere away.
Or you use water smartly and not waste it. Sure you have to truck some in now and again, but if they're envisioning a next-generation "smart city", smart water use would also be a part of it.
But most people don't want to conserve in that manner.
Our daily lives we waste enough water to make any third world country cry. Watering lawns is practically a complete waste of water unless you are using it wisely as a filter medium for example.
It depends on where you are located. Here in the rainy Northeast, we worry a hella lot more about floods than we do about running out of water. I water my lawn, and it doesn't make a difference. No one is harmed, and no one goes without. There is no point in conserving water unless we are experiencing a rare drought.
And since it isn't practical to pipe it to the places where water is in short supply, we might as well just use it
Lots of sunlight also means cheap solar stills for water purification.
And I'm sure Gates has considered the water issue. In fact, he may have bought it because of that - with climate changing, the real issue IS going to be access to water.
And those solar stills aren't going to supply enough water for a city unless all the water is going to sustain life and precious little else-at best. The Dune books and their stillsuits make fascinating reading, but it's hard to imagine most people dealing with the problem.
(We are relatively fortunate in North America as we have almost half of the world's reserve of freshwater).
It could be a very smart play - get the technology used to recycle and conserve water working now, so when its really needed, you've just cornered the market in patents, and the technology has matured to be usable, while everyone else is scrambling to find fixes.
Or people could just live where the basics to sustain life already are. Here in the Northeast, we don't have to worry about dying if the solar still quits working.
I'm really interested in how they plan to deal with the water issue, it seems like a show-stopper. Maybe they can build something to recover water from the dry arid air - because otherwise they're going to have to pipe it in, and the Colorado River is already over used... They must have considered this issue when they bought the dry desert land...
They aren't going to be able to do that, and there are some presumed cheap ways to extract water from the air, but they just cannot provide enough water on a city scale. If this smart city is to live within the desert conditions, and not just be another drain on the overwhelmed Colorado river, people there will have to learn to exist in some pretty hot temperatures in the daytime,cold at night, a massive reduction in the number of showers that Americans are used to, extreme water conservation, and a standard of living that will keep most of us away. The only thing missing will be the spice.
It is also dumb for another reason: 90% of the water in Phoenix goes to water lawns. So just build the new city without grass, and use xeriscaping instead. Problem solved.
Because people like their lawns, and their golf courses and fountains and ponds and swimming pools and daily showers.
It's the "I want it all" syndrome. Make the people exist in the actual environment, and with the actual amount of water that the environment provides, and the number of people that select to live there will plummet. Here in the green rainy northeast, we hardly think about water until it reaches flood stage.But that's why the predominant color is green. But it gets uncomfortably humid in the summer, and cold in the winter, so some folks want to move to the warm places. But they still want the good stuff which takes water. And they sure as hell don't want that 120 degree summer temperature, so they spend their days in the house using the swamp cooler. which takes water.
If the desert was easy for a lot of people to live in comfortably, there would be a lot of people living there already in the native conditions.
I know a place that condensed so much water from the air that in the end they flooded the entire place. There's a bad side to this story though, the place was full of warlords fighting for a spice of some kind.
Sounds like the Poppy growers in Afghanistan.
Everyone's got an argument where 'plenty of solar power' solves each of the myriad problems of living in a sun-baked desert. The far easier solution is not to live in a sun baked desert.
Humans really like temperatures around 70 F/21 C. Solar power in the desert doesn't work very well unless there is water to evaporate. There you tend to need the "swamp cooler" type AC.
I'm a big fan of solar power. But to provide cooling in the desert, it's best use is being under the panels in the shade they throw.
New Jersey is not that bad.
Digressing here, but New Jersey is a state of incredible contrasts. The northern part is "which exit you live at" land, and the one most people think of. Urban AF. Then going south it becomes pine forests and a lot less population density, finally ending in Cape May, which is exceptionally different.
And in the meantime, they somehow produce enough food to support Chris Christie, and you know that can't be easy.
All the critics here who are chorussing "oh, Gates is so stupid, he doesn't know that Arizona is uninhabitable" are silly: we already know it's possible because 1.6 million people already live there.
Cool story bro, except it isn't that the desert is uninhabitable, it's that there are limits and you are pressing them. While your real estate brochure version of living in the desert is cool, it seems to assume that there will always be plenty of water, plenty of air conditioning, and will be just like living in 70 degrees all year round - perfect comfort.
And it's sort of funny - why move to an area when all you want to do is alter the environment to something the environment isn't.
As the population of humans on the planet continues to grow, it will becomes increasingly necessary to move into and settle regions previously considered inhospitable.
Learning to live in new environs is what resourceful life does when it refuses to die and depopulate at the edge of the Petri dish.
If we cannot figure out how to live (and eventually thrive) in the earthly atmosphere of the Arizona desert with its excessive heat and limited water, off-planet settlements are the dreams that come from pipes.
Your first sentence gives the answer for the last sentence. The numbers of humans are what makes it difficult.
Humans living in arid places has been done for a long time. Some incredible adaptation has occurred in Africa. But that is humans adapting to the local conditions. People have lived in America's southwest deserts as well, perhaps not as acclimated as Bedouins, but they got by. Even in Death Valley.
The difference is in the numbers. We try to convert the desert to what we think is ideal. We like the grass in our lawns, we like nice water fountains, and we like a lot of people inhabiting these places. This is completely unsustainable.
Going to Mars, it will be a few people, and probably living in containers like domes or maybe even underground. That isn't comparable to trying to turn the Southwest desert into paradise. 10 or 20 people - possible. Millions? Nope.
Who the fuck gave you the authority to speak for all women? Do you personally KNOW this woman? Then don't assume that she "wouldn't be doing it" for whatever bullshit reason YOU can come up with. You don't speak for her and you sure the hell don't speak for me so why don't you take your shitty attitude elsewhere. Damn third gen feminists.
Isn't it amazing? Third wavers have tilted feminism on it's head, effectively describing women as so weak that they are the ultimate victims. That there is no choice that they are capable of making, having been forced into a life of debauchery by those damn members of the patriarchy that sit on the bus with their legs too far apart therefore reinforcing rape culture. A bizzare fugue state of the world's strongest, toughest perennial victims. And becoming more shrill by the moment. I've even seen some stories about "femicide" now. So now men want to eliminate all women from the earth? How's that supposed to work? Kinda takes both sexes to continue the species last time I checked. But I suppose even thinking that is silly and non workable is misogynist for the third wavers.
And in a fit of projection that would make closeted homophobes proud, they throw the Misogynist pejorative around like a Fifth Avenue confetti parade, merely proving who hates who.
A woman who chooses to do this sort of thing is not doing anything illegal, and the main qualifications are wanting to make money, and not being concerned about any negative views. It is her choice, no one else's.
Other people have worked and saved money, then gone to college after a number of years, taken advantage of tuition reduction or elimination programs at work, or even simply used student loans to get an education. In fact, there aren't all that many women who choose to fund their education this way. Most who do are just pragmatic about it. And I'm not going to judge. Seems we have some pretty judgemental types here.
A side note is that a lot of their "customers" are women. https://www.womenshealthmag.co... . Not certain how that plays into the misogynist screeching.
She wouldn't be prostituting herself if it were not for the crippling cost of education. Fuck you misogynist pieces of shit for trying to justify this sexist state of affairs.
What's the matter with you dude? Your incredible stupid tactic of blaming men for this is ridiculous. You know how many women do not pay for their college education by becoming a stripper or a "cam whore"?
Almost every woman who goes to college, that is who. Somehow they manage. So lay off your gaddamned sanctimonious blame shifting, and grow up.
Her body, her decision, no one else.
It's naive to believe that it hasn't occurred already. But it's not a defect. It's by design. The defect is in the peoples' consent to their use. If nobody rises up, don't expect things to get any better.
I suspect there is a bit of an uprising going on at the moment.
volcano protoplasmic wind
pyroclastic flow, my eminent niggé
Dooood! Haven't you ever been caught in a protoplasmic wind? So hot now!
Not all of the women doing shows are vapid. Some are, but others simply see no harm in taking advantage of being hot, while simultaneously pursuing their long-term goals.
Yes, there are some local ladies who are paying for their education this way. Not my cup of tea, but tI'm not going to judge them. Supply and demand I suppose.
What is really weird is how while liberals had championed acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism (which I have no trouble accepting at all) and many of the more whacked out ones have demanded the ridiculoushundreds of "genders" bullshit, they get outraged by this sort of activity.
I think it needs framed in a way that they will accept. What of a transgendered person who finds their sexual release in running a webcam where they wank for money, and the money is the integral part of the gratification? How dare they pass judgement on them?
We need to add some new genders to the list:
Trans-pecuniary exhibitionist, CISpecuniaryexhibitionist, and maybe a few others.
While that "particular" student may have still been a webcam girl for the easy money, many and probably most only do it out of necessity in order to cover the expenses during a time when working while a full-time student for enough money is tough. So, a significant reduction in the cost of college saves at least these chics.
They ought to have student loans or something.
Seriously, assuming you are a liberal based on the concept that you're promoting the idea that this is a helpless yet strong victim woman who is forced into a life of depravity by the patriarchy, you are simply wrong.
If a woman is of an outlook that she can make money by strutting her stuff on the internet and that it is no problem for her, then she might do that. If she finds that to be unacceptable, she won't. My SO has had offers, and she's just said "No, thank you" and that was the end of it.
This is not a difficult concept unless one has watched too many episodes of Law and Order Special Victims Unit.
Our culture sucks and needs to end. Women forced to prostitute themselves just to get an education. What a shithole we live in.
Who is forcing them? They must have a moral set that allows them to justify this sort of activity.
I don't really care one way or the other if a woman does this or a man engages in this sort of activity with her. As long as it is consenting adults, it is none of my business I do not find the concept of remote control vibrators remotely exciting myself, but would no more pass judgement on her than I would on a person who prefers homosexual sex, or a transgendered person.