Years ago there was a thriving market in shareware...
Does your friend offer the opportunity for people to donate on his site, or set up a monthly subscription for single figures of dollars?
Sure, most people won't, but then most won't click on the adds the site displays either, assuming they even see them. And, if they do see them, I'd wager the majority of people would rather the adds weren't there.
So, get rid of the adds altogether, offer a subscription / donation option (not a paywall), and if his work is worth reading, and he can market his site successfully, he might, just might, be able to make a living doing it. No adds, no malware, good stories = more unique views and hopefully more revenue. Win - win - win.
If not, well, sucks to be a member of a profession whose numbers are growing at the same time as the opportunities for traditional employment and demand for their services are declining.
A second frustration is the viewpoint that the government can't manage anything without massive waste and corruption.
That is certainly the story that was told, and told again, in the 1970's and 1980's which led to the notion that privatisation was not only sensible but essential if the country was to succeed on the global stage. Of course the people pushing that view were also the people who profited when those industries were privatised.
Unfortunately that viewpoint is now practically enshrined as 'common sense', and, unless you own a popular newspaper, you've got practically no chance of persuading anyone otherwise.
Fast forward to today, and the most egregious examples of waste I see are those by private consultants and contractors on government contracts (think any IT done by D&T, PWC or any of the other large consulting firms) or private firms on no bid defense contracts awarded over G&T's at Checkers.
I dread to think what it's going to be like when the rest of the NHS and the Prison Service is fully privatised.
Has it even been proven that "fake news" is really an issue?
For certain values of 'proof', to my mind the answer is yes, absolutely.
As a simple example consider the case of the banking crisis of 2008. Who was responsible for this trashing of the economies of most, if not all, first world liberal democracies? Bankers, you say?
Who ended up getting blamed by the media and, consequently, Joe Public? Immigrants, the poor and unemployed, and the working classes. Oh sure, the bankers were in there too, as a group and a couple of individuals, but not for long. Who ended up getting really punished over the following decade? Yup, immigrants, the poor and unemployed, and the working classes.
The sheer amount of false information that was fed to the media and 'fountained out' via social media by lobbying organisations and think tanks masquerading as grass roots citizens groups was virtually unbelievable.
I would strongly recommend reading The Establishment by Owen Jones for a very good account of some of the organisations involved. While it is very UK-centric the principles apply equally across the pond. Even if you're a self-identified libertarian (like myself), an ardent supporter of free market capitalism in all it's amoral ugliness, or a rampant right-winger, you might find some of the observations and conclusions slightly disturbing.
Back to the specific question: A large part of the problem is that most people really don't even see that there is a problem. Obvious fake news is obvious, but then there's the deflections away from stuff that should but never does make the news, and the subtle and long term campaigns designed to persuade people that there's a consensus when no such thing exists - it's these that are much harder to spot, and much much harder to counter.
On that last I have no coherent suggestions, I'm afraid , or none that are simple at least.
Last time I checked, aren't monopolies bad for capitalism...?
Actually monopolies are the logical end-point of capitalism. Without regulation, and given enough time, there would only be a monopoly company masquerading as a competing duopoly.
I believe a similar logical outcome is evident in politics, where it's a mathematical 'certainty' that any democracy will end up in a two party state.
While we're at it, how about we repeal the decision to consider corporations to be 'people' in the eyes of the law, and also ban them from contributing to political campaigns
Totally with you on this, although I'm not completely sure how such a ban could ever be implemented, given how subjective such a topic would be (after all, when a newspaper, owned by a company, reports on politics - and as we'd want to be an informed electorate this is something we'd want - who's to judge whether they are or aren't campaigning?).
Climate scientists are just normal people. They aren't infallible. They also aren't corrupt psychopaths. They have an impossible job in front of them. And in the absence of a crystal ball, they are the very best resource we have available for figuring out what the hell we should do about all this.
Wise words, and I almost totally agree, except for the bit I highlighted.
They may be the best people to tell us what is happening, and what is likely to happen given future emission scenarios, but I'm not so sure they're any more capable of figuring out what the hell we should do than any of the rest of us. They're experts on climate, and all that entails, not politics, psychology, sociology, or various engineering disciplines.
The problem is global and extremely complex (barring 'simple' solutions that would harm society nearly as much as some of the worst case predictions would) and hence requires a global, as in requires 'buy-in' from most people, and multi-part solution. It's made more complex still because of the fact that while doing nothing will result in unpleasant consequences for most of us doing 'something' will also result in unpleasant consequences for some of us. The climate guys can only really tell us some of those consequences - the others are dependent on political, social and financial factors.
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah We hate it, yeah yeah yeah We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
You think you've found your groove Well, I'm here to set you stray-e-ate It's not that hard to prove Your music ain't that grey-e-ate
We say we hate it And you know that it's all sad We say we hate it And you know you should feel bad
We said it hurts our ears We almost lost our mind Not heard such crap in years Your drummer must be blind
We say we hate it And you know that it's all sad We say we hate it And you know you should feel bad
Oo, we hate it, yeah yeah yeah We hate it, yeah yeah yeah With a song like that You know you should feel bad
You know it's come to this I think it's only fair Stop writing all that shit And take it off the air
We say we hate it And you know that it's all sad We say we hate it And you know you should feel bad
Oo, we hate it, yeah yeah yeah We hate it, yeah yeah yeah With a song like that You know you should feel bad With a song like that You know you should feel bad With a song like that You know you should feel bad Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
The closest specific 'legislation' you're likely to find, to the US ideal as embodied in the constitution, is Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights which became binding on governments in 2009. Article 11 States:
Freedom of expression and information
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.
With somebody modding you (parent) informative, rather than funny, I can't help thinking that it's time we all started filling in some of our foxholes, rather than burying ourselves any deeper.
I might be wrong but I thought it was 22 yards to a rod, 10 rods to a chain (220 yards), and an acre is a rod by a chain.
I wasn't sure about furlong, other than yours 'looked' wrong, but someone below has used 40 rods (880 yards) as a furlong.
Complicated, not so much. Esoteric, perhaps, but at least it's on a human scale, or rather at one we can visualise / comprehend.
Since the metric 'system' stays the same regardless of the scale of measurement it's easier to use across multiple scales, but social history and social inertia will ensure that not everything at the human scale will be measured or described in metric.
Fake news spreads very fast. People will post things that they agree with (or find interesting) without thinking and checking to see if it is true. One harmless but false post that I recently seen on Facebook posted by a couple of my FB friends is that in 2018 1/1, 2/2, 3/3,...12/12 will all occur on a Sunday. It is a fun fact if it was true...
Excuse me, but are you conflating fake news with jokes or memes?
Or are you suggesting that only by eliminating humour can we purge fake news from our feeds?
The Christian preacher doesn't hate you when he's saying those things, if anything it's more of a warning. And he's probably (well possibly anyway) not lying either when he says he believes....
Hate speech is obvious by intent, alas the intent is not always obvious.
It strikes me that this is really the problem that facebook et. al. will have.
Turning an analogy into, and please forgive the use of this 'word' - it does occasionally serve a useful purpose, whataboutery is probably counterproductive.
Sure we, either personally or as society as a whole, have problems with addictions to other things and they can be terribly destructive, but bringing them into a discussion about the problems caused specifically by addiction to video gaming is a distraction.
A distraction from the fact that it is increasingly a problem (for the, very good, reasons given in the summary) and that the consequences of these altered behaviours are generally detrimental, are not limited to self, and are potentially long lasting.
The increasingly pathological behaviour of a large segment of the population is definitely not one of the least of our problems.
What made me really laugh about that article was that, instead of simply apologising in the first instance, he then doubled down and insisted he'd never called it fake news.
Do these clowns really believe that they're right as long as they always and only insist that everyone else is wrong?
And why is making (and admitting) a mistake seen as such a bad thing anyway? They're the best learning experience we're ever going to get, and refusing to even acknowledge the mistake simply means we learned nothing from it and, therefore, will just continue to make the same mistakes again and again. That's not a trait I'd want to see in people I were appointing to positions of 'authority'.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Are Free Speech Zones purely local or state level legislation then?
I can't help but think that when protesters are corralled into specific areas out of sight of visiting dignitaries and politicians they don't really have the right of assembly, or freedom of speech.
Genuine question, by the way. I'm not particularly conversant with US law.
It's also worth noting that Tesla consumer satisfaction ratings always top the industry, at around 90%.
It's worth pointing out that this could be due to any number of other factors that aren't due to the car's reliability:
Owner values the fact it's electric more. Owner values performance more. Owner enjoys the 'cachet' of owning a Tesla more. Or, of course, buyer's remorse prevents owner voicing negative opinions.
In addition, ownership of any brand, and model, of car comes with its own selection bias - not everyone would buy that car. Those that did, by definition, self selected. Because of this, whilst we all tend to assign more weight and meaning to personal experiences, it's the aggregate stats garnered by an independent third party that are likely to be the most reliable and informative. Even with these though sometimes you have to drill down into the numbers to get the full story: If a car has above average reliability but is in the top decile for repair costs you really really don't want to be involved in an accident!
My first thought on reading the summary was about those card games too.
It's quite funny that, once again, there seem to be different rules because "it's online".
I mean, in what way don't those card packs fall under their definition of 'Loot Boxes'? Because you're guaranteed to get at least 1 rare card? Oh, please!
To be fair, my feelings on the matter are torn between disgust at the manufacturers / publishers, frustration with the further extension of the nanny state, and sympathy, or perhaps pity, for those who lack the self control to 'just say no'.
I believe the answer has been stated before: The only winning move is not to play.
What we are discussing is which parts of climate change models are basic physics and which parts are not.
Consider me suitably admonished, and back on track.
That's important because "basic physics" is clear, solid, and accepted science, while empirical models with fitted parameters, economic predictions, etc. are not.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong but aren't empirical observations how we test the validity of our theories. Short of trivial contradictions or logical inconsistencies they're how we disprove the stuff that's incorrect. I do agree that an empirical model, while displaying the current state of affairs very accurately, would probably be of limited use in making predictions, but I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of today's climate models are not empirical, in this sense. That they also include additional calculations, involving other greenhouse gasses such as methane, or changes in surface albedo, not to mention the role of the oceans in absorbing both CO2 and heat, doesn't make them empirical, it just makes them more complete, and increases their margin of error (or the size of the error bars in their results, if you prefer).
The "basic physics" model is described by Manabe and Wetherald (1967), a widely accepted and respected paper. It models both water and carbon dioxide and calculates that every doubling of carbon in the atmosphere leads to a 2C increase in global average temperatures, i.e., a logarithmic dependence.
Thanks for the reference, and yes, that was a very interesting paper. In particular it does make me question my assertion that "there's a... long lag between peak CO2 and peak temperature", as Fig. 6 from that paper seems to suggest that the lag is actually only about 300 days (assuming their relative humidity model). I suspect that over the years I conflated persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere with lag. Oops! I can, at least, rid myself of that misconception now, so thanks again.
However, it is clear, based on accumulated evidence gathered in the 50 years since that paper was published, that there's something more going on...
It's consistent with measurements so far. When you extrapolate that to 1000 ppm, that means a temperature increase of about 2.6C.
That would rather depend upon your starting point of course. The most widely quoted figure for pre-industrial times is 280 ppm. Doubling to 560 ppm gives, assuming average cloudiness, an increase of 2.36 degrees (Table 5), increasing further to 1000 ppm would give a total increase of 4.2 degrees (v roughly). Given the current concentration of about 380 ppm we should be seeing an increase of about 0.8 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. In this we agree, it's consistent with measurements so far.
Of course, 1000 ppm is not realistically achievable even if we wanted to reach it. I believe there is 3x10^12 t of CO2 in the atmosphere and about 1x10^12 t of known fossil fuel reserves (not all of them recoverable; I leave it to you to convert carbon to CO2).
Given what I've seen of human nature, all I can say to that is "Good!". For what it's worth, based on those figures, and assuming no other factors, the absolute worst case scenario (all recoverable and used, none sequestered or stored) would be atmospheric concentrations of about 840 ppm, leading to an increase in temperature of maybe 3.5 degrees (again, v roughly).
So, that's what basic physics tells us: if we even could burn all of our fossil fuels, global average temperatures would go up maybe 2.6C, and most of that increase occurs at high latitudes. Pardon me for not panicking. You're welcome to propose more complex models, but if you assert that people should believe those more complex models because they are "basic physics", you are misrepresenting them.
This, there is a lot of phrases and words in languages that are grammatically incorrect...
I hope the irony was deliberate.
In addition to that his other errors were "its in popular use", and the misidentification of "isn't" and "ain't" as having the same roots (is not is not the same as are not).
None of these, however, detract from what were a number of good points. In particular, the apostrophising of certain plurals, the example given was doubly apt, just looks better, especially when pluralising acronyms.
In short, errors aside, and I may be biased, but I completely agree with him.
I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it
I 'saved' an hour of daylight yesterday, and again today. I'm going to 'save' an hour of daylight tomorrow too. All these hours 'saved' add up to real 'savings'.
More to the point, is anyone seriously expecting me to give two fucks what the US Government Publishing Office has determined is the 'correct' phraseology.
The day I take English lessons from a US government department is the day after our resistance to your invasion ends!
And that heat trapping effect, the greenhouse effect, is nearly saturated already.
Your understanding clearly differs from mine, and you seem to be basing your understanding on information I've either not seen, or overlooked in my researches. Could you provide a reference to back up, and possibly expand upon, the highlighted section above, please?
Furthermore, water vapor leads to increased cloud cover, which provides negative feedback.
Well, it would be more accurate to say increased humidity can lead to increased cloud cover, which would certainly self limit the positive feedback. That's not the same as saying it's a negative feedback loop, merely that the positive feedback does indeed 'suffer' from diminishing returns, and hence will, likely, not lead to runaway warming. It's also not entirely clear, as far as I know, exactly what effects this will have on rainfall intensities or location, other than there is an assumption (based on reasonable, if unproven, projections) of increased localised flood risks.
Pretty basic, if you ask me.
Simplistic would be a better description. In fact, to get serious climate change out of the models, climate models tend to replace "basic physics" with empirical short-term relations between carbon concentrations and temperature and assume unbounded exponential growth of carbon emissions, both wildly unrealistic assumptions.
In response to a challenge by a 'denier' 5 years or so ago I made a prediction, which has since turned out to be true. I have, on several occasions, asked 'deniers' what would change their minds, and what (if predictions turned out to be true, or if their minds were changed) they would do differently. In mathematical terms however what I have witnessed is "A & !B". So, please forgive me if I've been reduced to 'simplistic' reasoning. Being simplistic doesn't, however, make it any less true.
As to the latter part of your statement, I dispute both assertions, although this somewhat depends on what you mean by "short term" or "serious climate change". Perhaps you'd care to define the terms of what looks suspiciously like a strawman.
Anyway, firstly the relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperature is clear, but there's a, in human lifespan terms, long lag between peak CO2 and peak temperature. This is basic physics backed up by empirical observation. Odd that you'd find something to complain about in this. As an aside, it's partly this lag which is vexing politicians and climate scientists. The very real concern is that since we won't feel the full climatic effects of the CO2 we've already added to the atmosphere (for many decades yet) we feel like there really isn't a problem, and we keep on adding more CO2, which will magnify those climatic effects further.
Secondly, any serious climate model, of which there are a number, has been run for a number of carbon emission scenarios. A model does not assume 'unbounded exponential growth' it merely tells us what the likely effects (on global temperatures) will be given particular inputs. No sensible person has argued, that I'm aware of anyway, that humanity is even capable of producing 'unbounded exponential carbon emissions', let alone that this is the most likely scenario for the future.
I'd like to finish on a positive note: It's beginning to look like this year will be the first year since roughly the start of the industrial revolution (there may be the odd momentary vale in the landscape) in which our carbon emissions haven't risen from the previous year. In addition, last year over half of all the power generation capacity that was added, globally, was based on renewable resources. Despite all the denial, despite all the entrenched interests, we many finally be making positive steps towards dealing with the problem.
True, but the effects are diminishing with increasing concentrations. That's because CO2 acts like an optical filter, and most of the radiation is already absorbed.
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you're getting at, this is almost completely wrong. The reduction in effect with increasing CO2 concentrations is trivial. Why? Because Carbon dioxide (only) absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in three narrow bands of wavelengths, which are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (M). In other words incoming sunlight is barely filtered by CO2 at all, it's the light that's reflected from Earth that's 'trapped' by the CO2 in the atmosphere.
those feedback loops are not "basic physics", can't be "demonstrated in a laboratory"
And wrong again! Increased CO2 --> Increased temperature --> Increased evaporation --> Increased temperature (due to water vapour also trapping heat) --> Increased evaporation... Pretty basic, if you ask me.
You also have to assume that there are no additional negative feedback loops to counteract the effects, again something we don't know.
Are you suggesting the burden of proof here (for postulating, and proving these hypothetical negative feedback loops) lies with the people saying Global Warming is a problem?
It's dishonest for you and others to conflate the basic physics of the greenhouse effect with the speculative models involving assumptions about feedback that are used to argue for the need to reduce carbon emissions.
Since there's no need to invoke speculative feedback loops to say increasing CO2 concentrations are, for want of a better way of phrasing it, fucking up the future standard of life for everyone on the planet I'm not sure we're the ones being dishonest. We're certainly not the ones telling ourselves the biggest porkies!
I had the irritation of not being able to view a pinned item (an infographic that some AC on/. had linked to) maybe a week or so ago.
In the end I relented and signed up, though I did question my judgement at the time.
Since then they've sent me one e-mail a day, with maybe half to a dozen pins in it. A couple were actually, genuinely, interesting to me. Most, just eye candy, took a minute of my day to glance at, and dismiss, much like I do with the majority of arrivals in my general inbox. To be fair I'm not sure this is a unbearable hardship, or an unfair trade.
May I ask, am I missing something? What is your complaint against Pinterest, or the source of your hatred against it?
Slashdot Mirror
Years ago there was a thriving market in shareware...
Does your friend offer the opportunity for people to donate on his site, or set up a monthly subscription for single figures of dollars?
Sure, most people won't, but then most won't click on the adds the site displays either, assuming they even see them. And, if they do see them, I'd wager the majority of people would rather the adds weren't there.
So, get rid of the adds altogether, offer a subscription / donation option (not a paywall), and if his work is worth reading, and he can market his site successfully, he might, just might, be able to make a living doing it. No adds, no malware, good stories = more unique views and hopefully more revenue. Win - win - win.
If not, well, sucks to be a member of a profession whose numbers are growing at the same time as the opportunities for traditional employment and demand for their services are declining.
A second frustration is the viewpoint that the government can't manage anything without massive waste and corruption.
That is certainly the story that was told, and told again, in the 1970's and 1980's which led to the notion that privatisation was not only sensible but essential if the country was to succeed on the global stage. Of course the people pushing that view were also the people who profited when those industries were privatised.
Unfortunately that viewpoint is now practically enshrined as 'common sense', and, unless you own a popular newspaper, you've got practically no chance of persuading anyone otherwise.
Fast forward to today, and the most egregious examples of waste I see are those by private consultants and contractors on government contracts (think any IT done by D&T, PWC or any of the other large consulting firms) or private firms on no bid defense contracts awarded over G&T's at Checkers.
I dread to think what it's going to be like when the rest of the NHS and the Prison Service is fully privatised.
Has it even been proven that "fake news" is really an issue?
For certain values of 'proof', to my mind the answer is yes, absolutely.
As a simple example consider the case of the banking crisis of 2008. Who was responsible for this trashing of the economies of most, if not all, first world liberal democracies? Bankers, you say?
Who ended up getting blamed by the media and, consequently, Joe Public? Immigrants, the poor and unemployed, and the working classes. Oh sure, the bankers were in there too, as a group and a couple of individuals, but not for long. Who ended up getting really punished over the following decade? Yup, immigrants, the poor and unemployed, and the working classes.
The sheer amount of false information that was fed to the media and 'fountained out' via social media by lobbying organisations and think tanks masquerading as grass roots citizens groups was virtually unbelievable.
I would strongly recommend reading The Establishment by Owen Jones for a very good account of some of the organisations involved. While it is very UK-centric the principles apply equally across the pond. Even if you're a self-identified libertarian (like myself), an ardent supporter of free market capitalism in all it's amoral ugliness, or a rampant right-winger, you might find some of the observations and conclusions slightly disturbing.
Back to the specific question: A large part of the problem is that most people really don't even see that there is a problem. Obvious fake news is obvious, but then there's the deflections away from stuff that should but never does make the news, and the subtle and long term campaigns designed to persuade people that there's a consensus when no such thing exists - it's these that are much harder to spot, and much much harder to counter.
On that last I have no coherent suggestions, I'm afraid , or none that are simple at least.
Perhaps if the margins were bigger...
And this 'review' is why I'll buy it / watch it should the opportunity arise.
Cheers!
Last time I checked, aren't monopolies bad for capitalism...?
Actually monopolies are the logical end-point of capitalism. Without regulation, and given enough time, there would only be a monopoly company masquerading as a competing duopoly.
I believe a similar logical outcome is evident in politics, where it's a mathematical 'certainty' that any democracy will end up in a two party state.
While we're at it, how about we repeal the decision to consider corporations to be 'people' in the eyes of the law, and also ban them from contributing to political campaigns
Totally with you on this, although I'm not completely sure how such a ban could ever be implemented, given how subjective such a topic would be (after all, when a newspaper, owned by a company, reports on politics - and as we'd want to be an informed electorate this is something we'd want - who's to judge whether they are or aren't campaigning?).
Climate scientists are just normal people. They aren't infallible. They also aren't corrupt psychopaths. They have an impossible job in front of them. And in the absence of a crystal ball, they are the very best resource we have available for figuring out what the hell we should do about all this.
Wise words, and I almost totally agree, except for the bit I highlighted.
They may be the best people to tell us what is happening, and what is likely to happen given future emission scenarios, but I'm not so sure they're any more capable of figuring out what the hell we should do than any of the rest of us. They're experts on climate, and all that entails, not politics, psychology, sociology, or various engineering disciplines.
The problem is global and extremely complex (barring 'simple' solutions that would harm society nearly as much as some of the worst case predictions would) and hence requires a global, as in requires 'buy-in' from most people, and multi-part solution. It's made more complex still because of the fact that while doing nothing will result in unpleasant consequences for most of us doing 'something' will also result in unpleasant consequences for some of us. The climate guys can only really tell us some of those consequences - the others are dependent on political, social and financial factors.
That small 'correction' aside, great post!
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
You think you've found your groove
Well, I'm here to set you stray-e-ate
It's not that hard to prove
Your music ain't that grey-e-ate
We say we hate it
And you know that it's all sad
We say we hate it
And you know you should feel bad
We said it hurts our ears
We almost lost our mind
Not heard such crap in years
Your drummer must be blind
We say we hate it
And you know that it's all sad
We say we hate it
And you know you should feel bad
Oo, we hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
You know it's come to this
I think it's only fair
Stop writing all that shit
And take it off the air
We say we hate it
And you know that it's all sad
We say we hate it
And you know you should feel bad
Oo, we hate it, yeah yeah yeah
We hate it, yeah yeah yeah
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
With a song like that
You know you should feel bad
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
The closest specific 'legislation' you're likely to find, to the US ideal as embodied in the constitution, is Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights which became binding on governments in 2009. Article 11 States:
Freedom of expression and information
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions
and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless
of frontiers.
2. The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected.
As always, the devil is in the detail...
With somebody modding you (parent) informative, rather than funny, I can't help thinking that it's time we all started filling in some of our foxholes, rather than burying ourselves any deeper.
I might be wrong but I thought it was 22 yards to a rod, 10 rods to a chain (220 yards), and an acre is a rod by a chain.
I wasn't sure about furlong, other than yours 'looked' wrong, but someone below has used 40 rods (880 yards) as a furlong.
Complicated, not so much. Esoteric, perhaps, but at least it's on a human scale, or rather at one we can visualise / comprehend.
Since the metric 'system' stays the same regardless of the scale of measurement it's easier to use across multiple scales, but social history and social inertia will ensure that not everything at the human scale will be measured or described in metric.
Fake news spreads very fast. People will post things that they agree with (or find interesting) without thinking and checking to see if it is true. One harmless but false post that I recently seen on Facebook posted by a couple of my FB friends is that in 2018 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, ...12/12 will all occur on a Sunday. It is a fun fact if it was true...
Excuse me, but are you conflating fake news with jokes or memes?
Or are you suggesting that only by eliminating humour can we purge fake news from our feeds?
The Christian preacher doesn't hate you when he's saying those things, if anything it's more of a warning. And he's probably (well possibly anyway) not lying either when he says he believes ....
Hate speech is obvious by intent, alas the intent is not always obvious.
It strikes me that this is really the problem that facebook et. al. will have.
Turning an analogy into, and please forgive the use of this 'word' - it does occasionally serve a useful purpose, whataboutery is probably counterproductive.
Sure we, either personally or as society as a whole, have problems with addictions to other things and they can be terribly destructive, but bringing them into a discussion about the problems caused specifically by addiction to video gaming is a distraction.
A distraction from the fact that it is increasingly a problem (for the, very good, reasons given in the summary) and that the consequences of these altered behaviours are generally detrimental, are not limited to self, and are potentially long lasting.
The increasingly pathological behaviour of a large segment of the population is definitely not one of the least of our problems.
What made me really laugh about that article was that, instead of simply apologising in the first instance, he then doubled down and insisted he'd never called it fake news.
Do these clowns really believe that they're right as long as they always and only insist that everyone else is wrong?
And why is making (and admitting) a mistake seen as such a bad thing anyway? They're the best learning experience we're ever going to get, and refusing to even acknowledge the mistake simply means we learned nothing from it and, therefore, will just continue to make the same mistakes again and again. That's not a trait I'd want to see in people I were appointing to positions of 'authority'.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Are Free Speech Zones purely local or state level legislation then?
I can't help but think that when protesters are corralled into specific areas out of sight of visiting dignitaries and politicians they don't really have the right of assembly, or freedom of speech.
Genuine question, by the way. I'm not particularly conversant with US law.
It's also worth noting that Tesla consumer satisfaction ratings always top the industry, at around 90%.
It's worth pointing out that this could be due to any number of other factors that aren't due to the car's reliability:
Owner values the fact it's electric more.
Owner values performance more.
Owner enjoys the 'cachet' of owning a Tesla more.
Or, of course, buyer's remorse prevents owner voicing negative opinions.
In addition, ownership of any brand, and model, of car comes with its own selection bias - not everyone would buy that car. Those that did, by definition, self selected. Because of this, whilst we all tend to assign more weight and meaning to personal experiences, it's the aggregate stats garnered by an independent third party that are likely to be the most reliable and informative. Even with these though sometimes you have to drill down into the numbers to get the full story: If a car has above average reliability but is in the top decile for repair costs you really really don't want to be involved in an accident!
I'd still buy a Tesla though... :P
I live and learn.
Thanks!
...suduko...
I'm not sure if this was a deliberate error or not.
Just in case, I think the word you were looking for is 'seppuku'.
My first thought on reading the summary was about those card games too.
It's quite funny that, once again, there seem to be different rules because "it's online".
I mean, in what way don't those card packs fall under their definition of 'Loot Boxes'? Because you're guaranteed to get at least 1 rare card? Oh, please!
To be fair, my feelings on the matter are torn between disgust at the manufacturers / publishers, frustration with the further extension of the nanny state, and sympathy, or perhaps pity, for those who lack the self control to 'just say no'.
I believe the answer has been stated before: The only winning move is not to play.
What we are discussing is which parts of climate change models are basic physics and which parts are not.
Consider me suitably admonished, and back on track.
That's important because "basic physics" is clear, solid, and accepted science, while empirical models with fitted parameters, economic predictions, etc. are not.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong but aren't empirical observations how we test the validity of our theories. Short of trivial contradictions or logical inconsistencies they're how we disprove the stuff that's incorrect. I do agree that an empirical model, while displaying the current state of affairs very accurately, would probably be of limited use in making predictions, but I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of today's climate models are not empirical, in this sense. That they also include additional calculations, involving other greenhouse gasses such as methane, or changes in surface albedo, not to mention the role of the oceans in absorbing both CO2 and heat, doesn't make them empirical, it just makes them more complete, and increases their margin of error (or the size of the error bars in their results, if you prefer).
The "basic physics" model is described by Manabe and Wetherald (1967), a widely accepted and respected paper. It models both water and carbon dioxide and calculates that every doubling of carbon in the atmosphere leads to a 2C increase in global average temperatures, i.e., a logarithmic dependence.
Thanks for the reference, and yes, that was a very interesting paper. In particular it does make me question my assertion that "there's a ... long lag between peak CO2 and peak temperature", as Fig. 6 from that paper seems to suggest that the lag is actually only about 300 days (assuming their relative humidity model). I suspect that over the years I conflated persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere with lag. Oops! I can, at least, rid myself of that misconception now, so thanks again.
However, it is clear, based on accumulated evidence gathered in the 50 years since that paper was published, that there's something more going on...
It's consistent with measurements so far. When you extrapolate that to 1000 ppm, that means a temperature increase of about 2.6C.
That would rather depend upon your starting point of course. The most widely quoted figure for pre-industrial times is 280 ppm. Doubling to 560 ppm gives, assuming average cloudiness, an increase of 2.36 degrees (Table 5), increasing further to 1000 ppm would give a total increase of 4.2 degrees (v roughly). Given the current concentration of about 380 ppm we should be seeing an increase of about 0.8 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. In this we agree, it's consistent with measurements so far.
Of course, 1000 ppm is not realistically achievable even if we wanted to reach it. I believe there is 3x10^12 t of CO2 in the atmosphere and about 1x10^12 t of known fossil fuel reserves (not all of them recoverable; I leave it to you to convert carbon to CO2).
Given what I've seen of human nature, all I can say to that is "Good!". For what it's worth, based on those figures, and assuming no other factors, the absolute worst case scenario (all recoverable and used, none sequestered or stored) would be atmospheric concentrations of about 840 ppm, leading to an increase in temperature of maybe 3.5 degrees (again, v roughly).
So, that's what basic physics tells us: if we even could burn all of our fossil fuels, global average temperatures would go up maybe 2.6C, and most of that increase occurs at high latitudes. Pardon me for not panicking. You're welcome to propose more complex models, but if you assert that people should believe those more complex models because they are "basic physics", you are misrepresenting them.
The effects of methane as a greenhou
This, there is a lot of phrases and words in languages that are grammatically incorrect...
I hope the irony was deliberate.
In addition to that his other errors were "its in popular use", and the misidentification of "isn't" and "ain't" as having the same roots (is not is not the same as are not).
None of these, however, detract from what were a number of good points. In particular, the apostrophising of certain plurals, the example given was doubly apt, just looks better, especially when pluralising acronyms.
In short, errors aside, and I may be biased, but I completely agree with him.
I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it
I 'saved' an hour of daylight yesterday, and again today. I'm going to 'save' an hour of daylight tomorrow too. All these hours 'saved' add up to real 'savings'.
More to the point, is anyone seriously expecting me to give two fucks what the US Government Publishing Office has determined is the 'correct' phraseology.
The day I take English lessons from a US government department is the day after our resistance to your invasion ends!
And that heat trapping effect, the greenhouse effect, is nearly saturated already.
Your understanding clearly differs from mine, and you seem to be basing your understanding on information I've either not seen, or overlooked in my researches. Could you provide a reference to back up, and possibly expand upon, the highlighted section above, please?
Furthermore, water vapor leads to increased cloud cover, which provides negative feedback.
Well, it would be more accurate to say increased humidity can lead to increased cloud cover, which would certainly self limit the positive feedback. That's not the same as saying it's a negative feedback loop, merely that the positive feedback does indeed 'suffer' from diminishing returns, and hence will, likely, not lead to runaway warming. It's also not entirely clear, as far as I know, exactly what effects this will have on rainfall intensities or location, other than there is an assumption (based on reasonable, if unproven, projections) of increased localised flood risks.
Pretty basic, if you ask me.
Simplistic would be a better description. In fact, to get serious climate change out of the models, climate models tend to replace "basic physics" with empirical short-term relations between carbon concentrations and temperature and assume unbounded exponential growth of carbon emissions, both wildly unrealistic assumptions.
In response to a challenge by a 'denier' 5 years or so ago I made a prediction, which has since turned out to be true. I have, on several occasions, asked 'deniers' what would change their minds, and what (if predictions turned out to be true, or if their minds were changed) they would do differently. In mathematical terms however what I have witnessed is "A & !B". So, please forgive me if I've been reduced to 'simplistic' reasoning. Being simplistic doesn't, however, make it any less true.
As to the latter part of your statement, I dispute both assertions, although this somewhat depends on what you mean by "short term" or "serious climate change". Perhaps you'd care to define the terms of what looks suspiciously like a strawman.
Anyway, firstly the relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperature is clear, but there's a, in human lifespan terms, long lag between peak CO2 and peak temperature. This is basic physics backed up by empirical observation. Odd that you'd find something to complain about in this. As an aside, it's partly this lag which is vexing politicians and climate scientists. The very real concern is that since we won't feel the full climatic effects of the CO2 we've already added to the atmosphere (for many decades yet) we feel like there really isn't a problem, and we keep on adding more CO2, which will magnify those climatic effects further.
Secondly, any serious climate model, of which there are a number, has been run for a number of carbon emission scenarios. A model does not assume 'unbounded exponential growth' it merely tells us what the likely effects (on global temperatures) will be given particular inputs. No sensible person has argued, that I'm aware of anyway, that humanity is even capable of producing 'unbounded exponential carbon emissions', let alone that this is the most likely scenario for the future.
I'd like to finish on a positive note: It's beginning to look like this year will be the first year since roughly the start of the industrial revolution (there may be the odd momentary vale in the landscape) in which our carbon emissions haven't risen from the previous year. In addition, last year over half of all the power generation capacity that was added, globally, was based on renewable resources. Despite all the denial, despite all the entrenched interests, we many finally be making positive steps towards dealing with the problem.
True, but the effects are diminishing with increasing concentrations. That's because CO2 acts like an optical filter, and most of the radiation is already absorbed.
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding what you're getting at, this is almost completely wrong. The reduction in effect with increasing CO2 concentrations is trivial. Why? Because Carbon dioxide (only) absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in three narrow bands of wavelengths, which are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (M). In other words incoming sunlight is barely filtered by CO2 at all, it's the light that's reflected from Earth that's 'trapped' by the CO2 in the atmosphere.
those feedback loops are not "basic physics", can't be "demonstrated in a laboratory"
And wrong again! Increased CO2 --> Increased temperature --> Increased evaporation --> Increased temperature (due to water vapour also trapping heat) --> Increased evaporation... Pretty basic, if you ask me.
You also have to assume that there are no additional negative feedback loops to counteract the effects, again something we don't know.
Are you suggesting the burden of proof here (for postulating, and proving these hypothetical negative feedback loops) lies with the people saying Global Warming is a problem?
It's dishonest for you and others to conflate the basic physics of the greenhouse effect with the speculative models involving assumptions about feedback that are used to argue for the need to reduce carbon emissions.
Since there's no need to invoke speculative feedback loops to say increasing CO2 concentrations are, for want of a better way of phrasing it, fucking up the future standard of life for everyone on the planet I'm not sure we're the ones being dishonest. We're certainly not the ones telling ourselves the biggest porkies!
I had the irritation of not being able to view a pinned item (an infographic that some AC on /. had linked to) maybe a week or so ago.
In the end I relented and signed up, though I did question my judgement at the time.
Since then they've sent me one e-mail a day, with maybe half to a dozen pins in it. A couple were actually, genuinely, interesting to me. Most, just eye candy, took a minute of my day to glance at, and dismiss, much like I do with the majority of arrivals in my general inbox. To be fair I'm not sure this is a unbearable hardship, or an unfair trade.
May I ask, am I missing something? What is your complaint against Pinterest, or the source of your hatred against it?