IndignantIguana

tempting. Does anybody here have a subscription to kagi? Is it worth it?

Even this article, despite repeating over and over how we have already crossed the “it’s too late” thresholds, ends with a call to action, as if we can still do something about it.

And as long as we go with their mendacious flow, hundreds of millions, and then billions will die well before “Net Zero by 2050” or “our great grandkids’ future” arrive. Because we are out of time. And we need to get to work immediately. There are a million things to do.

What is there to do? Let’s say we shut down fossil fuel infrastructure. What goes with it? Fertilizer production, farm equipment, transportation, refrigeration, all the requirements to sustain the lives we worry will be lost due to climate change. Let’s replace it with renewables, then. The cost in energy, production, and resources to replace the current world-wide farming, transportation, and energy infrastructure with renewables is somewhere in the high trillions of dollars and who knows how many years (decades) of time to make it happen. Of course we should still try to do it. But it’s not going to save us. The damage is already done. The patient is fatally poisoned. We could maybe stop the flow of poison, but they’ll still die. The hard pill to swallow here is there is no solution. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner and we’re going to die here. You can blame the oligarch class. They deserve it. But remember how hard it was to do even a partial shutdown during covid? The level of shutdown required to stop poisoning our planet is way more severe than that. It’s not going to happen, not willingly. Not until there is literally no way to deny what’s happening. And by then it will be far too late.

can you make a 3d printed battery that never needs replacing? or are you counting on planned obsolescence?

“not professional”, bah. Beat them at their own game. Tell them it’s evident they have much to learn, so we will be spending the next three weeks on sex education.

I think the issue is most people don’t understand what an LLM is doing. It’s not thinking about your question and finding the right answer. It is just doing a bunch of math to calculate the most probable response based on all it’s training plus or minus some minor random variation. If your question could be answered by a thorough Google search then an llm can probably give you a good answer. If it’s about something you’re not going to find on the internet then the LLM will just make up something that sounds convincing. And that’s the problem. It may sound convincing but it’s a con man.

I could see a chocolate bar with mint and hot peppers, or maybe hot chocolate?

Of course it’s a lie. Everything he says is a lie. But this wasn’t because he couldn’t find help. This was because the credible Iranian threat of bombing every oil field in the middle east was enough to get someone (the US oligarchs?) to tell him to back off. They know that if the oil stops flowing everything will collapse and they will loose billions. It’s always about money in the US. The reaction of the stock markets is what seems to matter most. And honestly I don’t care why he’s turning around. If he pulled out entirely and said it’s because God told him to I’d be delighted. Just stop the madness, please.

Then again, it is also possible this is just the well-worn US/Israeli tactic of “can we have a cease fire to restock our weapon supplies?”

And to my original point, there are countless reasons he’s unfit for the job, and a sickening waste of a human being, but any sign of backing away from this disaster is a good thing, not something to criticize.

Really? Chickened out? Are you hoping for the collapse of the entire global economy? Food shortages? Is that what having conviction looks like? This is the first even slightly hopeful sign I’ve seen in this whole shit show. A better title would be ‘Trump finally tries to pull back from armageddon’

CO2 has never been a bottleneck for plant growth. It’s always been bioavailable nitrogen. This has nothing to do with climate science. If you got this wrong it’s because you’re a gullible fool.

Well, it’s harder in a lot of ways. But it’s not that bad. Using healing magic (even potions) comes at a cost. Most other magic is fine and has no drawback. There are other ways to heal though. Food heals a lot more but only works outside of combat. Shouts are now memories and there is one that steals health from defeated enemies. And there are other ways it is harder. Learning comes not from experience, but from books that you buy. Enemies don’t scale. They are fixed level at various places in the world. It’s a huge mod though with a great story and definitely worth playing.

I’ve always wondered if that had something to do with the cultural revolution in China in the late '60s early '70s. Like was there something about living in or before that time that made you look older as you aged? And maybe the people born well after that time just weren’t under that kind of stress and ended up looking younger.

I’m not sure they are the same thing. And maybe there are layers to this. A code base can be a representation, a map, of some real-world thing. A physics engine in a game maps to real-world physics. A robotics control program maps to a set of movements that accomplish a task. But there is another layer that I think is more what the saying is about. As a software developer you have a mental map of your software. You have some understanding of how it works to accomplish its goal. And your mental map, your understanding, may be complete and correct and it may not be. This is one of the most common sources of defects in code. I think my code is working this way, but actually it’s working that way, so when it runs it does something I don’t expect.

Meanwhile we are standing up new fossil fuel plants to power AI and writing government contracts to buy more coal.

“Greenhouse gas measurements are like skidding into a car crash. The disaster gets closer and closer but you can’t stop it, you can clearly see the crash ahead, and all you can do is howl.”

• Prof Euan Nisbet, University of London

Short version, a lot of forests near oceans are dying because of rising sea levels. Intrusion of saltwater is the biggest reason for the dying trees, though “drought, pests, and storms” also contribute.