tal

joined 1 year ago
[–] tal 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Boeing Everett Factory

checks

Volume: 13.3 million m³

That being said, I don't know if it is internally divided.

There's a really large cave in Southeast Asia somewhere.

kagis

The Sơn Đoòng cave in Vietnam:

Formed in Carboniferous/Permian limestone, the main Sơn Đoòng cave passage is the largest known cave passage in the world by volume – 3.84×10⁷ m³ (1.36×10⁹ cu ft), according to BCRA expedition leader Howard Limbert. It is more than 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) long, 200 metres (660 ft) high and 150 metres (490 ft) wide.

So that'd be nearly triple the volume of the Everett Factory. Though the cave has two holes in its roof, and I don't know exactly how you define "room" here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOH4gbW18Ts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVpk7LQML8g

[–] tal 3 points 1 month ago

I don't know about most, but generally those "background sound" sort of ambient things are pretty relaxing.

goes looking on YouTube for some examples

Rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8plwv25NYRo

Lake waves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se5NjX-cM5I

Ocean waves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHPEKLQID4U

I think that the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, is relaxing to listen to.

finds an example on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miUKO5g0ONk

[–] tal 14 points 1 month ago

Clearly we need a Threadiverse community equivalent to Reddit's /r/fifthworldproblems.

[–] tal 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Prompt was "Sailor moon eating a crow, while wearing a crow, while riding a crow, and is also a crow."

Somewhere at Microsoft, data scientists are data-mining the generative AI prompt log to obtain deep insights into the working of the human mind.

[–] tal 5 points 1 month ago

Did you compute for air in the barrel after calling out there was no air in space?

Yes. What I'm looking for is to try to figure out what the increase in muzzle velocity in space is based on relative to a known muzzle velocity on Earth in air.

[–] tal 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What the hell did Cuba do to deserve this?

The embargo? Seized a bunch of American-owned property in the revolution. The US said "you can nationalize it, but you gotta pay for it". The Cuban government said no, and the US said "then we won't do business with you".

Lot of property owned by Americans out there in the world. Makes people think twice about treating it as a free cash grab bag if the last group to try it regretted it.

Also, as someone else pointed out, it's an embargo, not a blockade, which would be forcibly preventing them from doing business with anyone else, like, parking warships offshore and not letting anything in or out. A blockade would be an act of war. Embargoes are not.

[–] tal 1 points 1 month ago

Way Too political, too much about tech, anime, video games, pc, gaming,

I was on Reddit extremely early, when most of the material being posted was being posted by members of the company.

Early Reddit was mostly about tech and startups, and Reddit grew.

[–] tal 3 points 1 month ago

I think that it'd be nice for it to be larger, but it's also hit a critical mass where it's large enough to generally serve as a replacement for conversation for my use of Reddit, so it's not a overwhelming issue for me.

I'm not in a "better small/restricted" camp.

[–] tal 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Politically, it will be hard for the EU to permit the UK to rejoin with the opt-outs that the UK had.

I don't think that's an option. I think it's a new application and new terms negotiated between the EU and the UK, not "back to how it was".

I'm an American, so it's maybe hard to put myself exactly in the same shoes, but if I were in the EU and able to act freely, I'd personally make the concession to permit the opt-outs to the UK if it permitted for Rejoin (that is, I don't think that there is great harm, as things were working all right earlier and that any precedent concerns could be addressed arguing that this is a special case) and if I were in the UK and could act freely, I'd make the concession to the EU to give up the opt-outs if it permitted for Rejoin (that is, I think that ultimately, the UK was going to have to give up the opt-outs anyway if staying in the EU...I don't think that Sweden's approach of kicking the can down the road repeatedly on monetary union, for example, is going to be sustainable ad infinitum).

I'm just skeptical that political leaders are going to be able to act freely on this matter, as they have their own domestic political pressures.

Trading with "RoW" is hard while trading within the single market was easy. Rejoining the EU wouldn't disrupt much other than lowering barriers.

Yeah, the existence of the TCA does mean that this is considerably less of a factor than otherwise would be the case, but there are still going to be affected parties -- the economic disruption that Brexit would cause was one of the most-prominent arguments in favor of Remain I saw pre-referendum (auto factories using JIT manufacturing will close, vendors doing cross-Channel sales will go under, etc), and this would run through that again.

[–] tal 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Britain will rejoin the European Union within 15 years, a former European Commission chief has predicted.

Speaking about the UK’s decision to leave the EU at the UCL Centre for Finance, Romano Prodi – who served as president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004 – said: “I’m betting that in 15 years the UK will come back.”

His optimism for Britain to rejoin the bloc is not matched by Jean-Claude Juncker, another former European Commission chief, who in July suggested it would take “a century or two”.

Speaking to Politico, he said: “When you leave a boat, you can’t get back on the same boat.”

Hmm.

So, I think that the general Rejoin argument is probably twofold:

  • The leadership was generally in favor.

  • The referendum was close and happened during a time when events were unfavorable towards Remain (the European migrant crisis).

I've argued myself that I don't think that it will happen for at least some decades, and might never happen.

I don't think that I'd say "won't happen for two centuries", though. That is a long time politically to predict anything with finite time bounds. Compare the world in 1800 to the world in 2000. That's a very different world.

The arguments I've made in the past against a near-term Rejoin being likely are:

  • Politically, it will be hard for the EU to permit the UK to rejoin with the opt-outs that the UK had. It has denied new members that wanted opt-outs on the grounds that those aren't being done any more. The EU would need to unanimously vote to add the UK and extend it those opt-outs. And in the UK, the referendum that was close was on being in the EU with those opt-outs, some of which I understand would be politically difficult in the UK to not have. So the very close Leave referendum is perhaps not the best guide to a hypothetical Rejoin referendum, since the latter would probably not have the same state of affairs on offer that the former did.

  • The EU is not the same EU that the UK left. At the time it left, the UK had been a voice in shaping the EU. As a result, that EU was about as close to the EU that the UK might want as could be expected. But subsequent to that, it has changed. For one famous example, shortly before the referendum, the pro-EU Nick Clegg assured the British public that the idea of an unpopular "EU Army" was an absurdity, and while I don't think that I'd quite say that the EU has an army, certainly that phrase and the idea of military integration have moved forward.

  • While things have cooled a bit, the UK has some of the same issues that the EU did with the UK in the form of Scottish secessionists. Scotland was not permitted a second referendum using a similar justification on any kind of near term second referendum. Politically, I think it will be difficult in the UK to hold another near-term referendum on EU membership while also not handing Scottish secessionists another near-term referendum.

  • Political effect of inertia. Before, it was with Remain, and now with Leave. Reading pre-referendum analysis, my understanding is that it was generally agreed that the status quo was considered "normal" and had an inherent advantage. Leveraging that was, I expect, why Britain's pro-EU leaders had the UK join, spent some time, and then held a Leave referendum (as they had on the European Coal and Steel Community prior to that) -- to obtain favorable conditions giving the benefit of inertia to being in the EU. But they cannot really repeat that trick subsequent to a Leave referendum.

  • Economic disruption and the greater political weight of incumbents. Any change in economic environment involves disruption, will cause people to be laid off and businesses to go under. These existing organizations are more organized and speak with a louder voice than the not-yet-extant businesses and job slots who will exist in a post-change environment. It's one reason why free trade agreements -- though normally advantageous to a country as a whole -- are hard to get through, as the businesses who will go under and workers who will lose their jobs are organized and very vocal on the matter, whereas the businesses who will be formed as a result of the change and the workers who will be hired do not exist, probably don't know who they are, and have little effective voice.

  • Precedent for political consensus-building. Part of doing a referendum on weighty matters is as a political tool to build a political consensus for an outcome, to get the issue off the table. As a political leader, one doesn't want to have opponents of the result simply keep demanding a new referendum a few years down the road. It's harder to say "no" if those opponents can point to an earlier time an issue came up and say "but they got a second referendum".

As to the "might never happen" argument, I think that there are arguments for the UK to be a member, that it would be better-off in and the EU with it in...but that rather similar arguments would apply to Canada and the US merging, yet the two show no serious political movements to do so, though they have existed alongside each other for a long time and maintain an amiable relationship. It's clearly possible for that sort of thing to be a stable state of affairs politically.

[–] tal 57 points 1 month ago (3 children)

The liquid, which the Palo Alto Fire Department has deemed to be a nonhazardous mixture of borax, lye (also called sodium hydroxide) and green dye,

One of the workers told Hedblom that the liquid was a coolant. That’s also what the fire department told the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, which wrote in its Oct. 18 spill report that the liquid was “used for the chiller system to cool the Tesla Artificial Intelligence Supercomputer.”

“The Palo Alto Fire Department recovered approximately 550 gallons of the mixture from the storm drain,” the report said. “The incident occurred while Tesla personnel were draining the system.”

That's quite a liquid-cooled computer that they've got going on.

[–] tal 5 points 1 month ago

The 'Black Insurrectionist' was actually white. The deception did not stop there

He isn't an insurrectionist either?

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