I really think we’d be better off just reducing GHG emissions as quickly as possible. I realize we’re not doing that, but that fact doesn’t necessarily make solar geoengineering (or solar radiation management, whatever you want to call it) a better idea. In fact, it might make it a worse idea. Geoengineering should only be done (if at all) in conjunction with rapid reductions in GHG emissions and carbon capture and sequestration. Doing geoengineering without GHG emissions reductions and carbon capture is at best a complete waste and at worst a total disaster.

No one who speaks German can be an evil man.

Who was projecting that global energy related CO2 emissions would increase from 34 gigatons to 50 gigatons between 2014 and 2040? Was that a reasonable projection? What was it based on? Is this evidence of “progress” or inaccurate projecting into the future?

I can project that the murder rate will increase 50% between now and 2050, and then when the murder rate only goes up 10% I can say, “omg, we’ve made such great progress on the murder rate,” even though it still went up, because it didn’t go up as much as I projected it would. But was my projection likely or even feasible in the first place?

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Probably someone who lives in the southern US, where it rarely snows. This wouldn’t be unusual for someone living in many northern states, especially those around the great lakes. But to a southerner, this might as well be a different planet. They will close schools and businesses even for relatively light snow in the South. It frightens and bewilders them.

I don’t think ARM based hardware makes much sense for a desktop, even a mini PC. There are plenty of x86 based mini PCs that are doing just fine. But, ARM based makes so, so much more sense for mobile devices, and just anything that runs on a battery, like a laptop. I would love to see an ARM based Steam deck, for instance. Sure, it wouldn’t necessarily be as powerful, but it would be lighter, quieter, and the battery life would be much better.

People want validation not advice, even if that advice could fix their problem.

In his memo, Gates wrote that global warming “will not lead to humanity’s demise”. This misunderstands climate scientists’ warnings, said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy.

“I have not seen a single scientific paper that ever posited that the human race would become extinct … it’s a straw man, the way he’s proposing it,” she said. “He’s speaking about it as if scientists are saying that, and we’re not: what we are saying is that suffering increases with each 10th of a degree of warming.”

The memo from a “very influential person who controls a lot of money” hinges on “inarguably a false binary” between a world where everything is fine and “literally the end of the world”, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“In reality, there’s a whole hell of a lot of bad things that can happen in between,” he said.

Exactly. So many people act like there are only two possibilities: climate change is a hoax, everything’s fine and growth and prosperity will not be affected by global warming. Or climate change is real and it’s going to kill us all. Neither of those two scenarios are likely. We’re not going extinct, but everything isn’t just going to be hunky-dory, either.

The thing is, no one can tell you exactly where we’ll be by 2100, because that depends on what we do between now and then. If we get our act together and bring down emissions rapidly, we will be in a better spot in 2100 than if emissions remain elevated for longer.

Personally, I think the most likely scenario is that emissions will stay elevated for a while. I don’t see us decreasing our GHG emissions significantly any time soon.

EV adoption in the US is going to suffer as a result of the industry being dominated by tech bros. It’s unfortunate that buying into the EV industry in the US also means buying into a toxic culture. I just want a car that happens to be electric, I’m not interested in joining a techno-utopian cult.

“Seized” makes it sound like they did something nefarious, but all they really did was just invest in their own rare minerals industry and we… didn’t. And rightfully so, right? I mean, the government directing investment toward vital industries of national importance is socialism, right? And we don’t do that. We let the market decide that stuff, and the market said, “let China do it.”

As long as the Fed keeps lowering rates, the bubble will continue growing. As soon as it looks like the Fed will have to raise rates again, get out.

I helped a family member with their Windows PC a few days ago and, omg, I hate using Windows. It’s so bloated and unintuitive. It’s a mess, and it seems to get worse every time I use it.

No it won’t.

I’m sure it is hard being so stupid that you would look at that ridiculous “truck” and say, “yeah, I’ll drop $100k on that.”

One of the key characteristics of fascism is machismo: a kind of hyper masculinity, and one of the characteristics of machismo is seemingly that a man is right simply by stating something confidently enough. It’s not about facts, evidence, or rigorous testing, it’s just about being the right kind of man and having the right kind of masculine energy. That’s why fascists are anti-intellectual, because intellectuals and academics understand that research, testing, and experimentation determine truth, not manly vibes.

Shit hole country.

Isn’t a child acting sexually often a sign they were sexually abused? Maybe the problem isn’t gen alpha watching porn, but either more sexual abuse by their parents

The two things are not mutually exclusive. One of the ways a parent can sexually abuse a child is showing them porn. Porn is often involved in child sexual abuse.

I never said that the health professionals didn’t consider the possibility that these children were themselves sexually abused. Of course they did. I never said that the health professionals asked only about porn consumption but not about past sexual abuse. They make both inquiries. I wasn’t even necessarily making a causal argument, only pointing out the strong correlation. I can’t tell you, because I don’t know, how many of the children who consume pornography have also been sexually abused. I don’t have access to that information, I don’t work there. All I do know is that significant porn consumption (including kids being caught watching porn in school) is very common among these kids.

It’s not fake, I’m telling you what I know, you can choose to believe it or not, I don’t give a shit.

Edit: I would also like to point out that sexual abuse often involves porn. A sexual abuser will often use porn as a way to groom a child for sexual abuse. The two things are not mutually exclusive, the porn consumption can very much be a part of the sexual abuse.

I’m not sure about gen z, but I worry about gen alpha. My wife works in a hospital for behavioral health and she sees an alarming number of kids (as young as 6 or 7) who are acting out sexually, and most of them consume a considerable amount of online porn. Many of them are there because they’ve sexually abused a sibling.

This is anecdotal, and of course in a behavioral health hospital my wife is going to see only the children who are acting out the most, and those children are by no means representative of the average child. It is also likely that some children have always acted out sexually, for various reasons, long before Internet porn. But the number of children they see for sexual predation is very concerning.

If you think the next US civil war will be fought between Nazis and Marxist-Leninists, you don’t understand American politics very well. The US in 2025 isn’t Stalingrad in 1942.