tanbog

X isn't pronounceable. U is, though it sounds a bit funky.

The "U" would be readable and pronounceable in Italian.

Stringing a few "U" ending words together does sound a bit wierd though... like your making a hooting sound or something.

Also Italian here. The other issue with using "Lei" is everyone would sound like some overly formal grand parent or maybe a government official... it would be like people suddenly breaking into the royal "we" in english.

Iceland seems to do pretty well on almost exclusively renewables. And this includes Aluminium smelters which are amongst the most power-intensive heavy industries.

I used to think its roots lay in some kind of biblical fetish for armageddon. I have no qualifications in this area though so this is just my armchair-psychologist theory.

Oh that and often weird racism about how many people live in poor countries.

Until humanity has figured viable massively scalable long term power storage solutions we will always be at the mercy of natural phenomena (time of day, wind speed and direction etc).

I would argue we just need to make sure ongoing power needs are met - ie we can always turn the lights on. This doesn't need "scalable long term" storage - although pumped hydro, batteries, thermal salt all work well - it just needs sensible grid design so the needs at any one time are met by available power sources.

This above is obviously a "harder" problem than to just have a few big power plants you can throttle on or off but not that much harder and we already have the technology and knowledge - if not the political will - to do it.

Additionally AFAIK "renewable power sources" don't have the necessary power density to make them viable as humanity's exclusive power source.

This is flat out wrong. many communities already exist exclusively on renewables.

Neo-Malthusians generally only get as far as intro biology and avoid demography classes.

I don't begrudge money being spent on researching fusion. It is definitely a promising technology, but it's not coming to a power grid near you any time soon.

Even if we can figure out how to keep a reaction going with a useful energy surplus no one has any idea

a) How much a reactor will cost,

b) how long/hard will it be to build or

c) If there are any issues with the process - yes no nuclear fuel but there's still some nasty crap coming out of the reaction which you will have to deal with if you scale the technology.

Meanwhile there are a number of perfectly viable planet saving power sources - solar, wind, solar-thermal etc - already out there providing power.

Fusion is a nice idea, but it isn't the only way to save the world...

Security breaches used to be so much more aesthetically pleasing.

I second this. I think it was my first encounter with a genre book that totally "subverted" everything I had learned fantasy narratives should be.

This law was passed with support from the opposition labor party.

The stupidy here crosses the isle.

I know plenty of people who say "Legos".

But then I am from Australia.

Hasn't passed the Senate yet.

There is an arm-wrestle over a nasty piece of refugee legislation that might see both acts not get voted on today. That means it won't be back in parliament until next year and the government is looking so shaky it might not be in power then so... who knows!

Delusions of grandeur.

"In Great Britain, courts generally endorsed NCAs so long as they remained “reasonable” -- a quality that was very much in the eye of the beholder."

Legally speaking, reasonable refers to "The man on the Clapham omnibus" and is a standard test in many jurisdictions. It is NOT the same thing as the general use of the term in the English language. AT least in Great Britain and most Commonwealth countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

If I had a dollar for every time bluetooth failed between two devices...

Maybe part of the issue is an over-emphasis on "fidelity". People have always played around - or to be frank, many women have been assaulted and had to keep it quiet - maybe the best outcome would be more open communication and understanding between couples rather than even more prescriptive social norms about how relationships should work.

In political theory and International Relations studies, there is a reasonably well established set of theories regarding the difference between "A nation", "A state" and a "Nation-State" the three are not synonymous and it irks me somewhat how even in an article like this the three seem to be conflated as I think it adds t everyone's confusion about things.

Having said that, there is no "hegemon" (arbiter/judge/police/enforcer-of-rules) at international level so what is, or is not, a state is somewhat arbitrary and contingent on whatever power structures are at play at the time.

To be fair, the issue here is also that for most of the last 70 or so years the Taiwanese government actually claimed to be the rightful government for ALL of mainland China and even occupied its seat at the UN in that capacity for a time. I don't think anyone argues that Taiwan - outside of the Indigenous population which are a minority - see themselves as anything other than Chinese.

Never Trust Syfy...

Well, Orwell fought with the POUM, who were Socialists but twith Anarchist leanings so I don't think you can really say he was "impartial".

Having said that I fully concur with your recommendation of Homage to Catalonia. Amazing book about a pretty amazing time.

This paper does some interesting work to try and unpack why that is the case: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01952.pdf