161–170 of 557 posts
Saying nobody expected the COVID 10 years ago it is like saying nobody is expecting a big quake in the west coast of the US.
> (We don't remember how awful chickenpox was because (a) we're generally vaccinated in infancy and (b) it's not a killer on the same level as its big sibling, Variola, aka smallpox. But the so-called "childhood diseases" like mumps, rubella, and chickenpox used to kill infants by windrows. There's a reason public health bodies remain vigilant and run constant vaccination campaigns against them Don't understand that…
> low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh And lots of other places. About 1 billion people live along coastlines at 20 meters or less above sea level, and 200 million at 5 meters or less. I live in a wealthy country but well within the 5 meters range and am already having to think about whether it wouldn't be more prudent to sell my house today, now that it's still worth something, and emigrate to somewhere with a…
If you're in Bangladesh, where can you go, other than another country. And people will fight for that. They'll fight wars. With neighbors that have nuclear weapons. That will not end well for any of us.
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Last time I checked, there were dozens of commercial satellite ISPs ramping up their launches. Do these companies have a plan to deal with potential collisions and the potential space debris that would cause?
So is the earth, really. Reminds me of how all humans would fit in a ball of meat in Central Park [0]. The satellites aren't much bigger than humans, so even if there was a starlink satellite for every single human, it would still barely make a dent. Let alone the fact that the surface area would be larger 2000KM up, and without oceans. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/p0qws3/self...
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Predicting the supreme court would become more conservative during a conservative presidency and senate was not a hard prediction. Ginsberg was known to be in poor health, but I guess you could count that as a successful prediction. But the other details are all wrong. There hasn't been a Protestant on the supreme court in awhile, let alone a fundamentalist.
Are you saying that Catholics can’t be pro-life fundamentalists? That’s definitely false.
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Space is hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly big. Useful low orbital shells around the Earth are an awful lot smaller. They're still big, like the sky is big, but airplanes do manage to, at least somewhat regularly, collide with each other "in the middle of nowhere" (most midairs are around airports, since there are a lot of airplanes heading in and out of them). Aircraft debris, however, falls out of the sky in short or…
Kessler syndrome is definitely a problem. I've heard SpaceX claims to deal with it by putting their satellites in an orbit that requires periodic boosting to stay put -- if they don't, satellites decay and de-orbit after a few years. The plan is, I think, to regularly retire (de-orbit) and replace these satellites so they can continuously improve the design, and as a nice side-effect any collisions or otherwise misbe…
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He'll block you on twitter for politely quibbling with his presentation of facts.
More people should block on Twitter. Blocking is far preferable, in an environment like Twitter, to pointless hostile misunderstanding. It's a bad look to dunk on someone for blocking you; just let them block and get on with your life. Pay it forward when someone pokes you on Twitter with a question you can tell is going to pull you into a time-wasting cortisol spike.
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He'll block you on twitter for politely quibbling with his presentation of facts.
More people should block on Twitter. Blocking is far preferable, in an environment like Twitter, to pointless hostile misunderstanding. It's a bad look to dunk on someone for blocking you; just let them block and get on with your life. Pay it forward when someone pokes you on Twitter with a question you can tell is going to pull you into a time-wasting cortisol spike.
Your comment is way way too cancel culture for me. It hurts a lot having one bad exchange & having the door slammed in your face. Especially if it's some topic you feel strongly about, that you were trying to engage in.
You may be right that it's a better tact than engaging. It's a shit system though, deeply dehumanizing ways of treating each other.
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I wrote Accelerando from 1998-2004. That's a third of a lifetime ago. It's normal to slow down as you grow older!
Must be wild watching the overton window pass you in the fast lane.
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'I am forever advising people, "Why hit Reply when the Block button is right there?"' - jwz
I’ve seen this going around lately. https://twitter.com/mrfilmkritik/status/995446576536530944 > When someone disagrees with you online & demands you prove your point to their satisfaction by writing a logically sound defense, u can save a lot of time by not doing that. > Dude, I’ve known u for ten seconds & enjoyed none of them, I’m not taking homework assignments from you.