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We've already got super trees (genetically improved). These are selectively bred trees, not GMOs; stuff that gets super site-specific, like 'north side of a hill within 100ft of a stream'. IIRC Weyerhauser pioneered the work in this area...I want to say back in the 60s. They've reduced the time from planting to harvest substantially, something like ~80 years to ~30, and the new stuff is just growing faster.

The main problem is that the growth rings get huge, the lumber is technically stronger, but it's much denser and not well suited for all applications. If you look at old growth, you see sub-mm growth rings in Doug fir, and it's very light. Super trees can be quite substantial, like 1/8 to 1/4 inch. I've heard they burn hotter and more readily too. In my personal experience, old growth will burn all night in your stove but the younger stuff won't last half as long.

Been a while since I've poked my nose into forestry, I've probably got some of the details wrong but that's the gist of it anyway.

We may need to wait a generation until people who have grown up in this world and can filter feed on the information can create/disseminate narrative adapted to the new rate of information flow and yet somehow true to reality.

I'm not so optimistic. Remember when when people thought gen z and gen alpha would be "digital natives?" They were supposed to be tech savvy but a good chunk of them can't use a search engine, or a word processor. A teacher I know says that each year the kids just get stupider and stupider, they sit around all day on social media and their brains haven't developed or something.

Along these lines...I'm surprised the HN crowd isn't into blogging in markdown, published in a git repo. About as simple as it gets and you don't get tied to a single platform. You could key sign it to ensure authenticity for when somebody rehosts it or whatever.

I happen to know someone in the music industry. Not huge, but you might have seen them on MTV and you've probably heard their hits.

They say modern songs get written by a huge group of songwriters in hotels. Individual words and phrases will earn credits. They go through the list of everything floating in the songwriters' heads and whittle it down on a huge whiteboard and anything put up there and put into the song gets credited. I think the phrase they used to describe it was "Shit Smoothie Song Writing."

The person I know hates this and doesn't work with these people but they know the industry, etc.

Yep. Power or internet goes out where I live fairly often and you'd have to drive at least an hour to use anything but cash.

Another commenter already mentioned natural disasters, which happen with surprising frequency (I've been through quite a few myself).

Cash fills in society's all-too-common edge cases.

Actually I have them in my family (epi pen and all), but I've met many more people with false allergies that use them to justify disordered eating habits or something else (hilariously, I've seen someone use their allergies to try and micromanage what everyone else around them can eat, down to how their spouse's coffee is brewed).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/eating-disorders-the...

https://www.livescience.com/64423-food-allergies-overestimat...

https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2008/0615/p1678.html

https://www.verywellhealth.com/fake-food-allergies-1323997

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/food-cocktails/a5402/food-aller...

I suspect most people with food allergies actually just have an eating disorder, or anxiety/hypochondria issues. I wouldn't rule out sociogenic "food allergies" either. Look at the gluten-free fad that took off for a while.

I know Kroger (or QFC) has been doing this for ~6 or 7 years. My wife would start getting targeted ads for things that were in areas we lingered around for more than a few seconds.

FWIW Lowe's does the same exact thing. Probably IMEI harvesting but IIRC Lowe's is looking at or has implemented facial recognition. If not to identify your face outright, at least to see what you're focusing on in-store.

More reason to shop local at the hippy stores. Or start gardening.

I've heard about this, but it is surprising how little coverage it gets compared to other things.

If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda (you'd also have to weigh it against other stories developing at around the same time).

I have to wonder why a story of environmental disaster (and presumably, negligence) making a small town uninhabitable isn't being milked for every drop of sensation that can be mustered. I'd wager they're getting something better than ratings out of this.

I tried Mastodon for a little bit but quit because the community was too much like this.

How's anyone supposed to take you seriously if you perceive an existential threat from a children's author expressing their opinion? One comment I saw claimed that she was literally killing them. I mean...

Thanks for the clarification. I just think of my local radio as "NPR" since it's about 90% of the daytime content. TBH I thought Radiolab was independently produced but that NPR had picked it up instead of my local station putting it next to NPR content.

Radiolab is definitely one of my favorite radio shows though. The first time I heard it, it was the internal monologue of somebody having an existential crisis on an airline, which was equally bizarre and hysterical.

A lot of people say that new reactor designs will be a game changer but I can't help but wonder how much more benefit they'll provide over plain old solar and wind with hydrogen for storage and transport.

After the Ukraine invasion, I think it's also worth considering future political instability in reactor permitting and design. I believe the molten salt reactors negate a lot of the problems we've had to consider with the Zaporozhye nuclear plant being in a war zone, but I'm not sure it comes out to something much better than solar and wind.

The micro reactors sound interesting though.

I'm having trouble imagining something as detached from reality damages in IP suits. You could hypothetically have more wealth than the world GDP stored on a couple of hard drives if you go the amount of money they sue for. Just imagine, with a day of running dd, you'll have double the world GDP! And it'll fit in a backpack! We're lucky some deranged lunatic hasn't held the world economy hostage with his pirated media and a Linux workstation.

Does it make sense, in a world like the one in Gattaca, for a person that is part of a discriminated class, to go into space, instead of trying to change the society around him to be less discriminatory?

Most people in discriminated classes in the real world don't go out trying to change society.