drjesusphd

The land requirement for solar should not be so casually dismissed.

To power the US energy needs, you need an area about the size of New Jersey. Also roughly equivalent to the area taken up by roads. The interstate highway system alone has been cited as the largest public works project in history, and that's "just" asphalt.

To be fair, the main reason instabilities are less of a concern is wrapped up in that B^4 scaling.

"But do the media..."

Media is a plural noun. To use it incorrectly this way gives credence to conspiratorial thinking about the press.

I would think (and hope) that, when it comes to the possibility of millions of deaths, ideology would be sacrificed to some extent.

What if one pays $200/mo for the HIPAA-compliant plans?

So what? If AirBnB or the property owners are not held accountable, the law doesn't matter.

"Well, it's not a problem for me..."

It's far more petty than that. No one actually has to be inconvenienced. The average American is just plain resentful of unionized public employees.

It's been like that for at least 15 years.

The government has been in the business of basic research since science was a thing. Funding from taxes is a more fundamental component of the scientific process than peer review (a more recent development).

I've always had an odd pleasure at standing at the edge of cliffs. Something meditative about trying to overcome the feeling of unbalance. Think about it, you can be perfectly balanced standing on a cubic foot of rock. But if it's suspended hundreds of feet in the air, you would feel unbalanced (wind notwithstanding).

It turns out that this actually is dangerous. The feeling of imbalance is a "real" reaction your body has.

"Call of the void".

I seem to remember Sartre saying interesting things about this idea. Something about exercising your absolute freedom or something. As far as I know, it's perfectly normal.

Isaac Newton was my favorite imaginary person to give "tours" to.

About 7000 m/s on the surface.

(no single cell in your body will live as long as you)

Unless you're a woman who dies before menopause...

And what protest movement since has had significant success?

(I include Vietnam War protests as meeting the threshold).

Care to provide references that support this?

One can read that as "The minimum wage isn't doing its job anymore and needs to be increased."

Institutions can adapt, and I'm fairly confident they can handle this okay. I'm more worried about the damage that will be done to democracy from a political perspective and the criminal justice system. If you think large chunks of the US lack a shared epistemology now, just imagine when people have legitimate reasons to mistrust voice or video recordings.

"Travelling much slower" isn't really an option either. By the time a craft encounters Pluto, the problem is that it's going too slow. It then has to match the (higher) orbital speed, and Pluto's gravity is not helping much.

Some views, yes.

We're talking about concentration camps for children, not monetary policy.

There is no inherent morality.

Not inherent; we have to make it so.

Capitalism dominates, what, 80% of our waking lives? The idea that morality should only be relegated to the other 20% is madness.

If that's the case then there's no room whatsoever for capitalism to be anything other than an amoral system we should be ashamed of.

Vote with your dollar. You're allowed to make your own moral choices and refuse to contribute to evil.

But people you utterly hate have friends too, and they see something different than you do, and we do not have a singular moral world-view.

So because shitty people have friends, we should throw in the towel and refrain from enforcing moral codes in our own lives, behavior, and economic decisions? That's pretty weak stuff.

Using ISS parameters, it's more like 8:1, with it taking much more energy to get to speed than altitude.

"Low earth orbit is halfway to anywhere in the solar system."

lots of tritium

I think (combined with the statement about hot things next to cold things) you're overestimating how much fuel there is in the plasma. It's density is about a million times less than air. In most other contexts, that's a very good vacuum. I don't think there are any consequences to a fuel leak, but I could be wrong.

The primary issue is neutron activation. The neutrons from the fusion reaction tends to make inert components of the machine radioactive. Again, short half-lifes, but a concern that needs to be mitigated.

So this is how systemd takes over the Linux file system?

This is nonsense. Predicted is not the same thing as wanting. If the economy runs on everyone clapping for Tinkerbell, we have more problems.

Is it so crazy to believe there are ways to make healthcare better through the free market?

Yes, it is. Any market you're forced to participate in, lest you die, is not and cannot ever be a "free market".

Yes. This is a feature, not a bug.

With the US system, on the other hand, consumers have more protection precisely because the banking system is insecure. It's easy to get a fradulent charge reversed.