tingilinde

context

There's a study that has been interpreted to suggest wearing or not wearing a mask doesn't make a difference in contracting or spreading Covid.  There's also a lot of evidence that mask wearing does make a difference - a big difference, but people love to cherry pick and misinterpret.  

I'd suggest they look at this study, published in the BMJ, that shows wearing or not wearing a parachute makes no difference in the mortality rate when jumping from an airplane.

 

 

gold hydrogen

Although hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, free molecular hydrogen - the sort that stores a good amount of energy per unit mass - is very rare on the Earth.  Or is it?  Hydrogen usually is freed up from carbon based fuels like methane or electrolytically split from water using electricity.  These processes require a good deal of energy, so hydrogen is usually seen as energy storage.  That makes it uneconomical as well as, in the case of hydrocarbon derived H₂, very polluting. There are some sources of free hydrogen. The question is how common is it and is it economically and environmentally viable. 

We have many other alternatives. It's reasonable to search for and, if viable, exploit, but not an excuse to wait. Plus it's not the best choice for most forms of transportation. 

You may have heard about grey, blue and green hydrogen.  The color refers to where it came from.

 

 

 

the clouds of war

Leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

snip

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The events in eastern Europe in 2021 and 2022, coming just as the world emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, also unfolded against a fraught geopolitical backdrop: In 2014, Russia had already seized Crimea from Ukraine, and fighting by Russia’s irregular, unmarked troops, known as “little green men,” had destabilized eastern Ukraine and led to a long-running, low-level war that had continued ever since. Meanwhile, during the summer of 2021, the United States faced its own challenge: a chaotic and controversial end to its nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan.

This is the story of the Biden administration’s strategy and reaction to that looming Russian invasion — the battle to persuade skeptics and rally foreign allies to confront an almost-unthinkable threat, one that continues to shake the world today. All titles and military ranks are presented based on roles the speakers held in February 2022, and interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

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a tip of the hat to Jim

 

 

industrial bs generator

So much has been written on ChatGPT and other LLM tools.  I'm not an expert, but I do see (very) limited niches.  Unfortunately the major niches some in tech and investors are swooning over are a disaster and it promises to get worse.  Here's a quick summary.

 

stability

Human height is often used as a proxy for the impact of environment factors on a population over history.  Harsh times - plagues, wars, work contentions, etc - can reduce the normal genetically determined height.  Greg noted a study that looked at one very homogenous region over two thousand years.,   It turned out average height was very stable throughout.

 

north korea's nuclear program

An interview with someone with a lot of expertise.

snip

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Via his visits to the North and subsequent research outside the country, Hecker came to believe that the standard US narrative about its various failed attempts to negotiate an end to the North Korean nuclear program was seriously askew. That US narrative portrays North Korea as unreliable, a serial violator of diplomatic agreements, a country that uses provocations to extort rewards from the West. Instead, Hecker found that the story of the growth of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in the 21st century can more accurately be told as a series of missed opportunities—what he calls “hinge points”—when diplomatic openings that could have led to controls on the North’s nuclear program were undermined, sometimes by Pyongyang but at least as often (and perhaps more consequentially) by Washington.

I spoke with Hecker (who is also chair of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors) at some length about his book and how three successive US presidential administrations failed to take advantage of an apparent willingness by the North Koreans to accept a fundamentally new relationship with the United States—along with significant controls on their nuclear program. Those failures, Hecker said, center on the US government’s unwillingness to make what he calls “technically informed risk-management decisions.”

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lying is their fallback for about everything

Even if it kills people - Florida's surgeon general.

 

on palindromic sums

 

Neat!  I had no idea. A tip of the hat to Greg

snow and bad air in salt lake city

Increasing temperature inversions. By any standard the the air residents breathe can be very toxic.

snip

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The Salt Lake Valley’s pollution is especially noticeable in winter when the bowl-shaped valley is most prone to temperature inversions—a term meteorologists use to describe the phenomenon of warm, buoyant air moving over cooler, denser air near the surface. The warm air acts like a lid and traps pollutants close to the ground. In this region, the Wasatch Range, Oquirrh Mountains, and Traverse Mountains trap cold air in Salt Lake Valley and help shield the valley from stronger winds aloft that could otherwise clear out inversions.

“Temperature inversions and outbreaks of poor air quality are most common under high-pressure conditions in the winter,” explained University of Utah atmospheric scientist Sebastian Hoch. They typically develop on long, clear nights with calm winds when a layer of warm air aloft traps colder air in the basin below. “In the winter, the high reflectivity of snow and low sun angles limit daytime heating of the surface, making it easier for inversions to stay in place for days,” he added.

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Jean told me about this one..  the connection of Italian fascists and the Lord of the Rings.  (54m audo .. longish, but you get the gist in under)    The right wing in America has its own purity mythology.