bookofsand

7 ms·

1.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Malthus thesis was that populations grow exponentially, whereas resources grow linearly, thus population will relatively soon overshoot the available resources. Malthus was also an optimist. We are in a situation where we have a hard limit
2.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Speaking of US and China, obvious candidates are immigration policy and one-child policy. Other levers: female education, child mortality reduction, shift in cultural norms towards small nuclear families, access to contraceptives. The entir
3.
by bookofsand 5y ago
We are comparing energy / sqmi. US and China have similar landmass . 3.8M sqmi vs 3.7M sqmi. Comparing their total energy consumption is, up to a constant factor, the same as comparing their energy / sqmi consumption. Countries s
4.
by bookofsand 5y ago
US and China have relatively similar land masses, thus arguably similar levels of available resources. China happens to have a population 4.2 larger than US, thus 4.2 lower per capita resources. If US resource consumption is unsustainable,
5.
by bookofsand 5y ago
The author needs to familiarize himself with the concept of MTBF. It's surprisingly short for high order artifacts. Entropy will introduce errors and break down every single high order system out there. I am aware of two exceptions: th
6.
by bookofsand 5y ago
The solution to climate change requires indeed keeping large numbers of people poor and making existing people poorer. And it will fail indeed because of populist backlash. We should plan indeed for climate change, though not sure what to p
7.
by bookofsand 5y ago
To a first, second and third approximation: poor = small energy footprint rich = large energy footprint Assuming the problem is that the global energy consumption is too large, the last thing we want is to increase the energy footprint of t
8.
by bookofsand 5y ago
The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed to grow more money . Money is fungible, if beef were banned they's cut the forest to do something else with the land.
9.
by bookofsand 5y ago
https://matadornetwork.com/read/mapped-united-states-canada-... The name sounds nordic. Oslo, Stockholm & Helsinki would end up with a climate similar to Northern Manitoba. I tried to drop a Google StreetView to ge
10.
by bookofsand 5y ago
While the SUV-driving crowd is stomach churning, it is also small in the big picture. The huge elephant in the room is global population size, moving apace toward 10 billions and possibly beyond. Industrializing 10 billion people turns out
11.
by bookofsand 5y ago
A. The per capita approximation means the whole world has to be brought at third world status. At projected 2050 population levels of 10b, and 25GT/year emissions, per capita emissions allowance is 2.5t/year. There is no industri
12.
by bookofsand 5y ago
The vast majority of companies ask for a 'we own everything you breathe' agreement as a prerequisite for employment. The vast majority of employed software engineers don't have the luxury to work on side projects, unless they
13.
by bookofsand 5y ago
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event . > Such negative values occurring shortly after the GOE require a rapid reduction in primary productivity of >80%, although even larger reductions are
14.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Your suggestion is probably the correct solution technically speaking, as it funnels the screen reader I/O stream through browser APIs. The immediate objection is that most popular screen readers (JAWS, NVDA) are native apps and not br
15.
by bookofsand 5y ago
> For blind people, TTS settings are very personal. Is there a whitepaper that articulates concrete solutions to reconcile the myriad flavors of screen reader configurations with Browser Isolation technology?
16.
by bookofsand 5y ago
40 years of ecosystem recovery from a vantage point (Landsat) in a 6 minute video about Mt St Helens post 1980 eruption: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13614
17.
by bookofsand 5y ago
1000 sqmi of rewilded land: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone
18.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Subsistence agriculture? Slums? Manhattan hyper density? Cuba (2.68), Tunisia (2.60), Ecuador (2.43), Egypt (2.32), Brazil (2.25), Vietnam (2.20)?
19.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Under climate emission targets & global equity assumptions, western (#) lifestyle must end. In political terms, the western middle class lifestyle must end, the global elites will still ride their jets 'for the common good'. A
20.
by bookofsand 5y ago
In the old days errors came with error codes. This helped searchability using an index in a printed manual, but also Google. Unfortunately people are not good at pattern matching random many digits numbers, so this is not very useful in the
21.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Unionize.
22.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Ambiguity. 95% of the cases you forgot the semicolon, the other 5% you forgot something else.
23.
by bookofsand 5y ago
No, developers don't read compiler error messages, unless absolutely necessary. The economics doesn't work out: the compiler creates hundreds of error messages in a few milliseconds, whereas developers only have a very limited bud
24.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Inflation with a chance of hyper.
25.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Interesting. Just saw this headline in the local newspaper the other day: "New president of business operations Catie Griggs wants Mariners to be ‘most progressive team’ in MLB". https://www.seattletimes.com/sports
26.
by bookofsand 5y ago
I went SWE and I'm p**ed that Mechanical Engineering pays 2.5 less. It destroys the know-how basis of this country, if not the world. Might as well call it the Tech Disease, modeling upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki&#
27.
by bookofsand 5y ago
It just so happens that employees are more divided than ever on "social justice" / identity issues. We are on a wild wild ride.
28.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Even if we become a space faring species, land will still be a zero sum game. * Within the Solar System the amount of land available on bodies with not-crushing-gravity is limited to a few times the Earth surface. This includes hospitable b
29.
by bookofsand 5y ago
Fauci holds enormous power on how research money is granted or withheld. You're going to hear very few professional scientists, which desperately need grant money, speak against Fauci. That is until Fauci is removed from his position o
30.
by bookofsand 5y ago
This is the 'it depends on what the meaning of the word is is' defense: > A few of their [2017] experiments combined different elements of viruses to better understand what’s required to infect human cells. Specifically, the 20

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