theFu comments

Talking climate change for anything in less than 10 year spans, that's just crazy. 50-100+ yrs are needed, The science isn't THAT precise.

I won't live to see most of the terrible, predicted changes by 90% of climatologist, in the next 50 yrs. That doesn't mean they won't happen to others. These predictions all have error bars. Usually those are simplified to the "most likely", which is a judgement call or a simple middle-point in the error bars.

Where I work, we say, plan for the worst and hope for the best outcomes. Isn't that what everyone does who isn't politically motivated?

nVidia is far from the biggest company in the world. It is well capitalized, but that's very different than biggest.

Nvidia has fewer than 30,000 employees.

India defense ministry has nearly 3M "employees".

Walmart has 2.3M employees worldwide.

Amazon has 1.6M employees.

My point is that there are many, many, many, larger companies than nvidia.

A bunch of Indian and Chinese companies have millions of employees.

Correction: helium leaks were known before they launched.

Whenever there's an inconvenience like this, the commercial provider should be penalized in some way that doesn't put safety at risk. I don't know what that is, but Boeing Space clearly was overzealous in their claims about the spacecraft.

And to be extremely clear, Boeing Space and Boeing Aircraft are different subsidiaries. Workers don't really switch from one to the other. When I worked with Boeing Space people, they were smart and paid more than any other contractor, except, perhaps, IBM. Penalties for non-performance are definitely needed.

I wish it were on the ballot here. Let the people decide. Last time they let us decide something it was whether alcohol could be sold on Sunday afternoons. It passed by a huge margin, ruining all the liquor stores day off.

24 states don't allow citizens to force ballot issues.

I'd allow abortions at any time for rape or incest or if the health of the mother is at risk. For all other situations, I'd allow abortions as long as possible, provided the safety of the mother wasn't at risk. I wouldn't be opposed to a mandatory 7 day consultation period, but those consultations could be performed over the phone or internet to ensure factual medical information was provided. In the packet of facts, I wouldn't be opposed to having secular adoption information provided as well, provided there wasn't any religious slant to it at all. Nobody should be forced to have a child they don't want.

Haven't seen or watched CNN in over a decade. I guess they are still on TV somewhere?

Same for Fox News and MSNBC - which I've never watched that I'm aware. All of them seem too slanted. I miss when news reported facts, not opinions.

If Chinese vessels are following Japanese and other ships near Chinese 12nm limits, they aren't free to violate other country's 12nm limits. Smart move.

Start sending a different ship every 12 hours to places all along the Chinese coast, but don't cross the 12nm limit. Keep China busy guarding their real coast.

The U.S. goal is simple. Fair competitions without performance enhancing drugs involved in training or in competitions. Duh.

taking the word of authorities in China who determined the swimmers ingested a banned heart medication.

That's like two teens saying a pregnancy happened after she tripped and fell into a position for ....

What is any competitive swimmer doing eating in places where heart medications, much less a few of them, are accidentally added to food? That's a lie a 2 yr old would make up and everyone would know it was a lie.

There's a word for adults who can't say what they mean, especially to an employer. 5 letters (in English).

Not every job is a good fit for each individual. Recognizing that sooner is good, but it is decent to hand the written resignation to your boss and spend 5 minutes discussing it, even if you don't want to say anything bad. I've always used the "time for me to move onto new challenges" speech and hoped I'd be escorted out of the building immediately. Sadly, that has never happened. They always wanted me to stay for at least 2 weeks and multiple times for 1 to 6 months after being notified. 2 weeks is standard for normal employees. Key employees often negotiate longer transition periods.

No average airline staff could know if the grenades were inert or not.

For an M61, if the pin is pulled, safety clip removed and the hand toggle is fully open or missing, then it is inert.

$25. https://go-armynavy.com/u-s-military-inert-grenade/

$16 https://armynavyoutdoors.com/dummy-grenade-pineapple/

$16 https://armysurpluswarehouse.com/dummy-inert-grenade-please-read-description-for-shipping-restrictions/

However,

Cannot be shipped outside of the United States, FPO or APO addresses or to the state of California in accordance with California Penal Code 12020.) CAN'T BE SHIPPED INTERNATIONALLY, TO CANADA, ETC. IF YOU ORDER THESE AND DO NOT MEET THE SHIPPING CRITERIA WE WILL TAKE THEM OFF YOUR ORDER AND REFUND YOU.

Let me check the TSA prohibited items list:

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/hand-grenades says NO, not in checked or hand carried luggage.

 The final decision rests with the TSA officer on whether an item is allowed through the checkpoint.

Of course, Japanese laws probably prohibit them.

Within the US, looks like the only way to transport them is by informal ground shipping - i.e. not UPS, USPS, FedEx, but by getting someone to drive it.

Go India! Let China feel what it is like to have "disputed areas" abused. The larger, the better. I'm thinking the size of the so-called (like how I used the Chinese term?) completely made up, 9-dash line.

Mongolia, Russia, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam should all do similar.

Guess I'm the only one who thinks this is completely blown out of proportion. He took too paperweights to the airport for a flight home. What's wrong with that? These things aren't hard to find.

In hindsight, perhaps he should have shipped them? IDK.

China is making most world organizations appear stupid. They've been abusing not just the rules, but the attempts to get to the truth for decades. Why the world puts up with their lies, I don't understand.

WADA looks REALLY stupid and Chinese athletics associations are laughing.

But Trump is a convicted felon - 34 counts. Only a crazy person would vote for a convicted felon. And that's just the beginning. His lawyers have been delaying all the other trials for years now. If he wasn't guilty, he'd want his months in court to be handled and over - though I doubt he won't get jail time - he seems to believe it.

"Project 2025" is another set of considerations for every American to consider. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-seeks-disavow-project-2025-despite-ties-conservative-group-2024-07-05/ 6 close Trump advisors were in on the creation of that 900+ pg document to destroy the USgovt. Trump claims to know nothing about, but he's a proven liar, so I don't believe him.

In Korea, just put a price tag on the number of troops stationed there and let SK decide how much American blood is enough to be spilled for protection and to have American military equipment close to SK for when NK invades without warning.

The former-liar-in- chef said about the Project 2025 group,

"Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them."

30,001 lies from him now.

The Russian economy is eating about 6% just to pay out required money to injured and killed Russians from their folly in Ukraine.

Based on open source estimates from the governments of France and the United Kingdom as of May 2024, the Russians have likely taken around 400,000 casualties, with over 100,000 of those dead. Simple math shows that one-time payments would equate to 900 billion rubles for wounded personnel and at least 1.4 trillion for families of the dead, 2.3 trillion rubles total. This equates to 6 percent of the 2024 budget, a truly staggering amount that will continue to climb.

Ref: https://warontherocks.com/2024/07/wounded-veterans-wounded-economy-the-personnel-costs-of-russias-war/ - Personnel Costs of Russia’s War

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NATO countries like being treated well by the US and the President. Biden does that. Trump does not. Trump is a petty man, we've all seen it.

The only people looking forward to Trump winning are Putin and the 20% of disillusioned Americans who actually believe he isn't guilty of 100+ crimes and that he shouldn't be tried for anything, ever. I just hope that a sufficient number of real Americans vote for anyone other than Trump. Trump doesn't like science-based decisions because he's too stupid to bother understanding. He constantly lies. Over 30,000 lies (proven lies, not just opinion differences), and he doesn't know how the American govt is designed to work. He's a waste of water and minerals.

I always cheer for the Ukrainian athletes since the Russian invasion.

Before Russia invaded and until the 2nd invasion, Ukraine was one of the most prevalent cyber criminal countries in the world. We shouldn't forget that. Rule of law is something I guess Ukraine didn't really have, at least on the fringe. People would have to give part of their income to the hiring manager to get a job. That's how it works in Russia too. Everyone up the chain gets a "taste" of the money from everyone below them, just to stay employed. Call it an unofficial tax that everyone knows about.

"leading"? That's a marketing team that means nothing. I've worked at a number of "leading" companies in narrow industries that nobody here has ever heard about.

NATO is only a deterrent against Russia and Russian controlled authoritarian govts. Where ever Russian forces show up, there needs to be a NATO contingent to make the Russians think again, before invading, yet another country.

They've already invaded Georgia and Ukraine. Both aren't NATO members. I have no doubt that Russia would have invaded Poland, if it wasn't a NATO member. Clearly the Fins decided the same - and have joined NATO. This is all because Putin wants to put the USSR back together. Ukraine remembers what it was like being under Russia. It sucked. So does Poland. Belarus knows, but they have a leader who can't leave office if he wants to stay alive ... until he runs to Russia. He won't retire peacefully in Belarus, that is certain.

As for Biden, he actually listens to advisors. He doesn't say they are lying. He doesn't fire smart people who disagree with some warped stance. As long as Biden is breathing, he is better than the other option. Heck, even if he dies - before the election - hide it and I'll still vote for him, gladly. Anyone, ANYONE, dead or alive, is better than Trump for America and the world.

Check the “Made in” label on your Network equipment. Replace if “Made in China”.

All the IoT devices made in China that we use are phoning home to China constantly. If any aggression starts, you can be certain that every network with 1 of those devices will become unusable, if only to cause havoc. Likely they will do worse.

So, consider how much that $20 IoT camera will really cost or that $80 home router. At the low end, China electronics is plagued by "good enough" completion. It works, if you use it exactly as intended for the most common uses, but try to do something most people don't, even if it is listed as a feature and it won't. Plus, consider the buggy software caused by incompetence. Those bugs make Chinese software easier to hack, which is good for China and other "black hat" types to get into our networks.

Be certain not to confuse China and Taiwan. Some of the Taiwanese companies have the best device security. After all, they are constantly attacked by China. Look for companies making equipment that are required to have a security program run with 3rd party oversight. There are a few of those after their terrible firmware got the attention of certain govts. If they wanted to keep access to US markets, they had no choice but to do what was demanded.

Just for fun, the Taliban judo fighter's first match should be against the Israeli fighter. That would be fun to watch ... er ... when he forfeits.

"gender apartheid" - that's a good term.

physics dictates that a runaway greenhouse is not possible on Earth.

That statement is incorrect. To the contrary, life on Earth will end, if it survives all other ways that will likely end it first, in 2B years due to a runway greenhouse effect as our sun transitions towards a red giant and burns the oceans into the atmosphere, greatly increasing the greenhouse effect beyond the runaway point. This is physics and has been predicted scientists, except the crackpots.

In about 4B years, the size of the sun will expand beyond the current orbit of Earth, so while life will have all been killed off 2B years before (due to a super greenhouse effect), the Earth will become fuel for the sun ... or ejected. My money as a rocket scientist is on the Earth being eaten rapidly due to the solar atmosphere causing drag on the Earth's orbit.

When a main-sequence star like our sun — also called a G-type star or yellow dwarf — reaches the end of its life, it runs out of the hydrogen needed to power nuclear fusion in its core. As the star turns to other fuel sources and loses mass, its core gets hotter, and its atmosphere puffs up over millions of years. Eventually, our sun will grow more than 200 times as wide as its present size.

...

The main uncertainty, he said, lies in how much mass the sun will lose as it ages; the more it sheds, the smaller its final radius will be. “That is poorly known,” he said.

ref: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-clues-for-what-will-happen-when-the-sun-eats-the-earth-20231220

But whether the Earth is swallowed or ejected doesn't really matter. All life on Earth will be dead, dead, dead. This is why we need to get to other stars ASAP. Life that exists only around a single star will have a lifespan no longer than about 65% the life of the star itself, while the star is relatively calm.

Runaway greenhouse scenarios on Earth

Could continued warming on Earth cause the super greenhouse effect in these tropical regions to “run away” as it might have occurred on Venus? Runaway greenhouse scenarios on Earth are highly speculative, says Kahn. “We know that we’re not anywhere near that,” he said. “You basically need CO2 levels of a couple thousand parts per million, of which we recently passed 400 parts per million, or a massive release of methane, and there’s really no evidence for that at this time.”

Ref: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2534/scientists-assess-potential-for-super-greenhouse-effect-in-earths-tropics/

I wasn't trying to scare people living today. We will never see this. "highly speculative" "not anywhere near that" and "really no evidenced for that AT THIS TIME" ... but in the article, they did say that only recently were SGE realized to exist and they are getting larger over time as more and more heat causes more evaporation in equatorial regions. They don't know, but have been watching it for about 8 yrs. Climate changes require decades to be seen.

But Baldwin aimed the gun and ,presumably, pulled the trigger, causing death.

He was on a movie set.

He was told the gun was "safe".

Certainly you've seen movies where people aim a gun at others and pull the trigger, right? He expected a blank to produce a loud noise, not shoot a bullet. That's how movies are made.

The flaws where that Baldwin was horsing around with the firearm. He set the tone for the entire production crew, since he was a producer on this picture. He bares that responsibility.

The Armorer allowed the exact same weapons to be used for target shooting at lunch. She didn't actually control the firearms on set, which is a primary role for her job. She didn't ensure that real bullets weren't loaded in the gun or guns before any actor touched them. Another failure on her part.

Anything less is appeasement of terrorists. Can we all agree that taking hostages is what terrorist do?

Putin really, really, needed a hug. He knows what most of the world thinks about him.

Modi is thinking, "I get cheap oil for the price of a hug. Sure, I can do that." Most of the world has drastically reduced Russian oil purchases, but Russia has so much that someone will always need some of it.

The BRIC name is just for marketing. They aren't friends. They just put up with each other while looking at their individual "best interests". When India is flooded, how much aid does China, Russia and Brazil send? If they do send any, it comes with ties to be repaid somehow. Friends help when help is needed, without strings.

If you don't maintain the brake lines in your car, who's fault is it? Yours.

We had high temperatures and no rain for 2 weeks in June. Last Friday, it started raining and we are into the summer rain pattern of 30-50% rain chances daily, every afternoon, which comes just when the heat is getting started. The rain cools everything about 5 deg, which can be nice. It also keeps the plants happy.

There will probably be a few more weeks of ZERO rain this summer, where watering is required to prevent the grass from dying off. I'm in the SE US. We usually get 63 inches (160cm) of rain every year, so it is fairly wet.

Denver sees about 15 inches (38cm) a year. Huge difference. Eastern NE, Eastern KS and every where east of there ( Missouri river .... ) gets much more rain.

For everyone west of the Missouri River, they get the high temperatures AND very little, if any, rain. Completely different climate there.

Climate changes take decades to happen and decades to correct. Humans have been altering the climate for about 100 yrs now, so it will take about 100 yrs of consistent, corrective action to make any real changes to the climate. Of course, the Earth's climates is self-correcting, eventually, if we haven't already pushed it over the point where it becomes a greenhouse like Venus. Eventually, the Earth will be pushed in to an ice age again. Nobody alive will be here for that. Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will have to deal with the hotter temperatures and all that comes with those. No way around it at this point, even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions immediately and force 80% of humans to starve because they can't work and earn a living.

Any moving traffic offense by someone over 75 yrs old should require a fresh driving test to get a license. During the test, have the ride-along tester try to distract the driver with conversations or pointing out things to see.

Also, EVs usually have the brake on just by removing your food from the accelerator, so people who drive EVs learn to drive differently.

We all stand on the brake from time to time, but how many people stand on the accelerator? Just make doing that actuate the brake instead, unless there's a manual switch on the dash to prevent it - sorta like the TCS or Cruise Control power switches in my Honda. Those work well enough.

Baldwin as an actor isn't liable. It is the armorer who is. She allowed real bullets on the set for entertainment/target shooting. That's a complete fail.

Baldwin the producer is liable since he set the tone of non-safe gun use. He should have told the armorer not to take any safety shortcuts, regardless of who asked, including himself.

Most of the blame belongs on the armorer. She will never work again in that role.

Drainage and road conditions in Nepal are almost always terrible, even in KTM. Roads connecting the 2 largest cities are 1.5 lane wide mountain-side rides, with trucks, buses, vans, cars, and motocycles all trying to pass each other. Parts of that road are washed out, missing every time I've been on it, so half a lane is just gone. I'd assume this is common for all roads in Nepal.

Wish I had an answer for a realistic way to fix the major roads over a 20 yr period. I do not. Huge costs. There's usually only 1 way to get to a specific town, unless you count the road from the other side that goes into a neighboring country.

Barcelona is built for tourism. There are 10,000 pickpockets who will need to target locals instead of tourists if this slows down. It is really sad how brazen the thieves are there. Even doing that, we weren't prepared when one came into an empty restaurant, through the main dining area, into the back (not visible from outside), and ran between 2 tables to grab whatever they could, then ran out of the restaurant. We made it into a game - finger the pickpocket. It was clear that some worker there had called them.

Pickpocketing accounted for 48.1% of crimes committed in Barcelona. In 2023, the figure was reduced by 22% compared to 2019, from 129,149 incidents to 100,944, but was up by 6.5% compared to 2022 (94,7769).

If they want, they can limit apartment rentals to 6-months at a time, nothing shorter. That will just push people to rent in the countryside or by word of mouth. Barcelona does have hotels. Don't think this article is complaining about them. We stayed in the northern part of the city, far from the tourist areas - where people were home and in bed by 10pm, not just starting to go out for dinner, like everyone claims.