Jason

I'd really like to think that if there were more women in the chat, the boys would behave. But regrettably I have major doubts.

From the article you provided, bold my emphasis: The first problem is that the cost of such an undertaking is going to be insanely high, because the cost of constructing those mirrors on Earth wouldn't include the cost of transporting them to Mars, and the cost of constructing them on Mars doesn't include the cost of building the necessary infrastructure needed to mine the raw materials that would be required and then manufacture them into mirrors. I've yet to find a cost estimate that properly accounts for this. Many focus on only the energy costs of constructing the mirrors, but ignore the enormous costs of setting up the required infrastructure. (Which would still be far more feasible than transporting them to Mars from Earth using existing technologies) The second problem is that the temperature of Mars is actually one of the most feasible problems to solve; the others (atmospheric composition, radiation) are even more out of reach.

The below was written by @cannastop, who will do the write-ups. I will be doing the tabulating, so pm the lists to me. The Rules: Create a list of 10-100 of your favourite 70s movies, ranked, and send them to me by pm. They must be sent by pm in order to be counted, I won't count lists just posted in the thread. The deadline is October 6th, 2019. When you submit your list, you can write out a reason why you chose a movie in your top 10 and @cannastop may feature it on the actual countdown. The rules for what counts as a 1970s movie are that if it's a 1970-1979 on IMDb. (No ifs, ands, or buts.) Scoring is as follows: Minor note on formatting: it's easier to tabulate lists if you use the built-in numbered list feature. This isn't a rule though!

How does this comment only have two "haha" reactions? I actually laughed out loud.

Usually people are banned for alt accounts only because the accounts are to circumvent a ban. You can see from the ban/suspension history that if there are no other offences the alt accounts are suspended but the main is allowed to continue posting. This is a unique situation (understatement!) so they are taking to time to reach a decision. I'm confident the final outcome won't be influenced because he's donated to the site. (They've banned gold accounts etc, before)

I don't think they need to spend anything on marketing after this.

qft

I think that's a pretty typical weight for a 17" laptop - maybe a little on the heavier end, although it's been a while since I've taken a good look at what's on the market. But yeah at 15" and below laptops are typically lighter than that.

Collins is a British dictionary: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/onward. Pay special attention to the note at the top - in typical British usage, "onward" is the adjectival form, as an adverb "onwards" is used instead. In other words, as a Brit this really ought to be even more obvious to you than it would be to an American. Oxford is also a British dictionary, which I hope you already knew: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/onward I should warn you that you will have a very hard time convincing me that you have a better grasp of English than the lexicographers of the Collins and Oxford dictionaries.

I linked to it in the Onward thread because Tree said something stupid ("onward isn't an adjective") and the thread got temporarily derailed by people correcting him.

Seems appropriate to dig this up right now. (sorry Tree, but this is ridiculous)

In that case the other person's tweet was talking about Joyce's Ulysses, and it was specifically Joyce that she criticized.

I can't find this tweet (do you have a link?). If it's worded the way you describe, I think she's wrong about why it's revered by others. There's an enormous number of other "old stories by white people" that have been lost to history entirely, or have far less cultural awareness and impact. If I had to guess why, it'd be because they haven't been as well-regarded.

Very solid write up. I especially like that he converted the angular resolution of the telescope to something that people can easily visualize. Some of the other articles haven't done so, or did so using an old estimate of the angular resolution of the telescope (which has since been improved).

@DeeCee So I was reading a story about the teenager who egged the Australian senator, and reportedly said "Don't egg politicians. You get tackled by 30 bogans at the same time". I had to google "bogan" since that term isn't used here, and this video was one of the top results: I might've laughed harder than I should have at this (especially since some of the locality humour is going over my head), but I'm pretty sure I know what a bogan is now.

Only about 300 times more likely than dying from a lightning strike.

Sorry, I meant to reply earlier. Regarding specifically what lorddemaxus mentioned though, I feel like people who get really upset about things like "why are they casting X as a minority etc." is fairly limited in general, but more widespread among certain online communities. Most people (as far as I can tell) just don't care that much about that sort of stuff. But yes, people who are skeptical of the wage gap etc. are more widespread. Although I'm not sure that it's necessarily reactionary, for example I don't think there's ever been a time when most people accepted and especially understood the wage gap. (And certainly, some of the statistics quoted for the wage gap are easily dismissed by anyone inclined to be skeptical.) That being said, I do think social media makes it much easier for skeptical/reactionary viewpoints to spread more widely. (p.s. congrats on getting engaged!)

Small amendment: his PhD was on interplanetary dust, not interstellar dust.

"Nerd" isn't what I'd call the defining characteristic of all the young males on YouTube and elsewhere who are extremely salty about minority or female representation. I don't mean to argue about semantics, I agree that there's way too many gamers/comic book fans who are bigoted with regards to minority and female representation etc, It's just that linking it to "nerdiness" completely obscures the problem. All the nerds I know (and I know a lot, I am one myself) don't feel that way at all. The defining characteristic of nearly all these people is they're young (white) males who are unhappy with their lives in some way and want to blame something else for it, so they've constructed this narrative in their heads about how white males are the real victims. This is even true of the great many of them that I certainly would never called nerds (because they're morons).

I have a sneaking suspicion the answer is yes.

Using BOM avg. ticket price ($9.14), ~$410M.

For what it's worth, I sincerely believe I'm doing nearly as much as I can on a personal basis. I don't eat red meat anymore except when it's being served to me at a social gathering. I still eat eggs and poultry, and drink a bit of milk, but maintaining body weight has always been hard for me, so I'm pretty anxious about giving up on easily digestible protein (also a problem for me, but the details would be TMI). I take public transit everywhere, or walk. Admittedly, I'd rather not have a car right now for financial reasons as well, but when I do get a car it will be the most fuel efficient one I can afford. That probably means a tiny subcompact, because I definitely won't be able to buy electric. I generally try to minimize my electricity usage, probably more for financial reasons if truth be told. Ontario gets most of its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric already, so this isn't a very impactful thing for me to do most of the time. But none of this enough. Not even close to it, and everyone following my example on a personal basis still wouldn't be, because the decisions on what energy sources to use for electricity, and industry, aren't made by individuals. I don't think I should have to share all this every time I talk about climate change, because I'm not asking for sacrifice. I want innovation. I want a revenue-neutral carbon tax (and a global system of tariffs on countries that refuse to oblige) because I believe that will encourage industry to innovate, and industry and governments alike to seek carbon-free (or nearly so) sources of energy. I want the revenue from that carbon-tax to be used as tax relief for the individuals, so that the impact on working class people is minimal, and even of net benefit for those who can reduce their fuel consumption. I don't think such a revenue-neutral carbon tax, properly implemented and raised gradually, will demand sacrifice, except from the fossil fuel industry. It doesn't have to be a carbon tax, but I don't know of a more efficient way of encouraging industry to find new energy sources other than fossil fuels. Nothing else will suffice. If everyone in the world did everything they could to conserve energy on a personal basis and reduce fuel use while still eating and going to work etc., it still wouldn't avert the catastrophic climate change that awaits humanity if we continue to burn fossil fuels.

The big advantage of hydrogen fuel is that it's easily made using electricity, unlike carbon-based fuels which (probably, in practice) have to be made by photosynthesis to be carbon-neutral. So as long as you have clean electricity generation, then your hydrogen fuel cell is emissions-free, and doesn't require devoting land (potentially enormous amounts of it) to producing biofuels. The big disadvantage is that while we've figured out safe ways to transport and store hydrogen, none of them are particularly efficient on a volumetric basis - meaning that even if we had the infrastructure in place (which we don't) people would have to get used to refilling their vehicles much more frequently than they do now. I think it's a possibility, especially since technological improvements are probably possible (I'm not an expert though, far from it). In the long-term, I suspect the solution might be something along the lines of specially engineered algae that can be grown in large amounts in places that don't support agriculture (like deserts, which also have a lot of sunlight). But that might just be my bias from having a background in studying photosynthesis/biochemistry/genetics etc. The other possibility is of course a chemical process that produces a carbon-based fuel using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. I'm not sure what the solution is to internal combustion in vehicles, but again the key point is that a carbon tax that starts low and rises over time will allow the market to find the most efficient solution, whatever that ends up being.

I don't care where you got your education. This statement is flat-out wrong. For electricity generation, the lifetime cost of nuclear power is only slightly more expensive than coal and there are jurisdictions that have nearly entirely replaced electricity generation *from coal with nuclear. The main reason why so few have done so has much more to do with politics than it does economics or for that matter, physics. Where combustion cannot be replaced by electric engines, biofuels can replace oil, coal, and gas. Admittedly not easily, but it's simply not true to say that it cannot be done.

I missed quite a bit in a few hours. Regarding meat eating, and GHG emissions, it's true that beef is the worst but it's actually more to do with the grain generally required to produce beef (~7 kg grain/1 kg beef) compared to other meats. The reason is because cattle are generally eaten at a later age, which means more of the grain has been wasted as body heat rather than used to build biomass. Also, the land use factor is a one-time pay in of carbon dioxide from deforestation, over the long term the problem is the large amounts of energy being used for agriculture. And of course right now, most of that energy is coming from fossil fuels. Don't let anyone tell you fossil fuels can't be replaced, or that our best bet is carbon capture etc. Nuclear power only has a slightly higher lifetime cost than coal. Replacing internal combustion in vehicles is indeed trickier, but once we've made electricity generation carbon-free that will buy us some time to find solutions for vehicles, which on a global scale is more likely to involve carbon-neutral biofuels than electric vehicles (because of scarcity of lithium). The key point is, as @PANDA has mentioned/implied, the best part of a (necessarily global) carbon tax is indeed that it will hit all activities precisely in proportion to how much carbon dioxide they generate, after which industries and individuals can find solutions for avoiding said tax.