Yeah ancestral plants that became many crops look almost nothing like their descendants in many cases

The funniest I think are secondary crops like oats and rye. Our forebears weren’t even trying to grow a better version of those, those started off as just weeds that people were trying to get rid of in their wheatfields. In the course of purging them they accidentally selected for more wheat-like plants that people would be less likely to rip out until they became actual decent crops on their own, while also maintaining hardiness in areas that wheat couldn’t handle such that they spun off and became popular on their own rights.

Sounds like they should deliver reciprocal gifts to more refineries

It creates highly toxic waste products that nobody wants to keep stored for centuries in their backyard, just not a lot of CO2. That gets waved away a lot like it isn’t an issue. It’s better than burning gas, oil, or coal. It’s not better than renewables in my opinion. And nuclear needs a reliable cooling chain for its survival and all the people unfortunate enough to live close by. That’s normally done with water that happens to flow by the plant. If the increasing heat dries out these rivers, you’ll get a slightly more stretched out version of Fukushima.

It’s a very small amount that can be contained in secure casks and concentrated in a particular secure location in the middle of nowhere as opposed to other industrial wastes that are blasted out into the environment and our lungs.

You do need cooling water to keep a plant operational at full power by ensuring your condenser can handle all the steam coming in. If it can’t due to declining river volume then the operators must reduce power (thus making less steam which needs less condensing), if they for whatever reason were not paying attention to the alarms going off then their plant would automatically shut down for loss of condenser vacuum and restore that margin by itself. You don’t have to use rivers as the source of cooling for every nuclear reactor either though some existing ones are designed that way. You can source water from oceans, lakes, groundwater, heck you can make artificial bodies of water that are filled with surplus water and can be used in times of diminished water from whatever is used to feed them, etc.

1% of $44.69 billion is $446.9 million

Technically the four loans that were forgiven were interest free favors anyway, and Sudan before the war started owed $56 billion dollars to foreign countries in general (likely higher now) including about $5 billion-ish to China in particular according to Al Jazeera. So this doesn’t impact their interest payments at all but does make their debt to GDP ratio look marginally less horrific I guess.

I think this is more valuable not so much for a material economic difference but rather the positive signaling from China towards the SAF showing that it still continues to prefer the state of Sudan over the RSF.

You can distantly hear the UAE shrieking

I figured it was something like that haha just curious what angle you were coming from

On his Instagram fanpage in the comments people were posting RIP and some dude was gloating saying he died at Potrovsk in March according to some Telegram or something that popped up when I searched him up but not like an journalist’s article or anything that credible. I took it at face value but I guess it could be trolling albeit one really easy to contest

I went to a country on the equator that cracked the code. Live at the equator but on a bigass mountain many thousands of feet in the air and you’ll get the consistent days and weather but at a temperature that won’t roast puny AC adapted people alive 😭🧠

They already do

I was dreading summer this year in SC since the scorching spring just canceled the rain for weeks on end and launched us into extreme drought, one of the worst since they started making records. So I expected surely summer would twist the knife and crispify everything even worse. Then surprisingly summer turned around and has unusually had almost too regular deep bouts of moderating rain and thunderstorms that pulled us back to only abnormally dry for the year so far and kept things from getting too hot (though the humidity has miserable, like stepping out into a mouth). I thought spring was supposed to be the rainy season here… still, even with a lush green summer saving us I think it was still not great for a lot of the native insects and the less drought tolerant native plants. One of my blueberry plants and the maypop seedlings I had going up and died even with some supplemental watering and the previously numerous bees mostly vanished when their numbers dropped off a cliff. That left little competition when paper wasps hatched and proliferated after the worst was over and I’m a lot more leery of those territorial guys and the aggressive yellowjackets than the cute bumblebees due to my phobia. 😔

There was a net internal migration of ~300k people out of California last year, some mega rich have moved too. Red states gaining population and money get boosted electoral college votes and more political influence to sway the entire country rather than just their own states. They’re not disappearing into a vacuum unfortunately.

Can also be in the sense that if you enact it in California then they can pick up and leave for Texas or Florida and still mess up the country’s politics but leave California without the ability to get any taxes from them. Whereas if you enact it nationwide then they’d have to skip the country entirely to dodge it which would be more difficult and not advantage states that don’t agree.

300% reduction would mean you no longer pay for heating and instead get paid twice as much as you used to pay

Big chance for profits in Central Asian countries now with the way opening for more western investment so of course Trump wants his family’s fingerprints all over that in corrupt dealings. With the TRIPP connection being established through Armenia, that allows a path from the Mediterranean to Turkey, Azerbaijan’s exclave, Armenia then the main part of Azerbaijan, Caspian Sea and from there Central Asia. Other routes all have problems for getting to western countries because they rely on one of access thru competitor China with insane terrain and distance in the way, thru Afghanistan which has been unstable or restricted and now is blocked, thru Iran which has not been an option if you don’t want your company to be wrecked by massive sanctions, thru Russia which has sanctions and heavy war going on, or lastly and most palatably through Georgia (which is somewhat Russian-influenced under the Georgian Dream party and the directly Russian occupied territories) as the step between Turkey and Azerbaijan. Pathing through Armenia (which has recently fended off Russian influence attempts) in addition to the established Georgian route enables more volume to be sent to the west and gives Russia less leverage. So Central Asian countries can export more in that direction to lucrative European/American markets without worrying about Russia having an indirect veto over those flows of cash. Does mean they have to make Trump happy with his cut with that clown in the office, unfortunately for them.

Sure, I just thought it would be helpful to elaborate on the interests influencing the decision to do it now as opposed to previously.

They were being overly pedantic about a sentence in the article in the article that I found intelligible imo, but read their comment more carefully. WWI is the first world war, the one before the Nazis came on scene.

France has some of the cleanest electricity in the world so environmental arguments against using A/C there are less justified than almost anywhere else.

We had road rage before we had cars, never mind seatbelts.

On 28 November last, a lawyer and a solicitor were travelling to Meudon on business. They had passed the barrier and were driving along the river on the Pont de Grenelle side, when they noticed that the driver of a bourgeois carriage in front of theirs was amusing himself by cutting them off, sometimes throwing himself to the right, sometimes to the left, forcing them onto the verges, which were nothing but a pool of mud, galloping to be in front of them as soon as they tried to get back on the pavement and then pretending to walk at a step. This merry-go-round had been going on for twenty minutes when the impatient lawyer got out and asked the coachman what the meaning of such behaviour was. To explain the situation, the coachman struck him with a whip, which almost threw him under the horses’ feet. At this sight, not only did the lawyer’s travelling companion rush to his assistance, but a gentleman who was with three ladies in the other carriage, not bothering to open the door, passed through the window to get there more quickly. The three of them had the greatest difficulty in subduing the furious coachman, who even hit them, or tried to hit them, several times with his fists. The police were called, he was taken to prison and his carriage was impounded. At the hearing, it was impossible to make Gaumont understand all the rudeness and brutality of his behaviour. He just replied to all the comments made to him: ‘Let them bring in the other coachman; I had no animosity towards him, I didn’t know him’. The Court sentenced him to one month’s imprisonment and a fine of 25 francs.

Barthélemy G., an irascible coachman, drives a Compagnie Feuillerat omnibus on the line from Boulevard Périer to the Jardin Zoologique. Yesterday afternoon, the omnibus driven by Barthélemy G. was late. It was joined by an omnibus of the Compagnie Nouvelle, which was about to pass in front of it, when Barthélémy G. suddenly jumped from his seat and climbed onto the platform of the rival omnibus. He rushed at the driver of this omnibus, Mr Maurice Liard, and bit him cruelly on the nose. He then stabbed him twice in the face. In his fury, G. was about to commit a more serious act, when a ticket inspector intervened in the nick of time and put an end to this painful scene, with the help of a few passengers. Barthélemy G. was taken before Mr Dive, police commissioner for the 4th arrondissement, who detained him at the disposal of the public prosecutor.

Today, in front of the Jardin des Plantes, two coaches coming in opposite directions were passing each other, leaving a fairly narrow gap between them. At that moment, a coach travelling at high speed came between the first two. One of them broke a wheel. The driver who had caused the accident continued his journey without responding to the complaints of the injured party. Shortly afterwards, however, the driver was forced to drive past the overturned carriage. The person whose carriage he had broken threw himself on the horse’s bridle to get the name of the person responsible for the accident. The coachman, we are told, whipped the face of the person he had already harmed. Several people were attracted by this regrettable scene. But the gathering that it had caused soon dispersed.

On the pavements of Paris, coaches for hire are in a constant state of hostility towards omnibuses. This often results in brawls, the seriousness of which has made it essential for the authorities to intervene. Yesterday, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, an omnibus belonging to the administration of the Constantines, and driven by the coachman Gilbert, was passing along rue Coquenard. A cabriolet for hire, driven by the coachman Millon, tried to get ahead of the omnibus; at first it encountered some difficulty, which aroused his anger. As it passed the omnibus, he insulted the Constantines coachman, calling him the coachman of the paupers’ cart. Whiplashes were even exchanged between the two drivers. Millon, in order to strike more easily, got out of his carriage and struck Gilbert twice. The latter tried to get out of his seat to defend himself, but got tangled up in his reins and fell heavily to the pavement. He would inevitably have been crushed by his carriage had not a passer-by managed to stop them by running out in front of them. Millon was arrested and taken to the local police commissioner.

A guy in Camden shot and killed 13 in 1949 before surrendering after he ran out of ammo. In 1891 a guy fired a shotgun into a crowded Liberty, MS schoolhouse and injured 14. These kinds of crimes were out there in the world before you were young. More difficult to road rage if you and those near you don’t have the means to afford a carriage and crowd the roads.

People die when collided from behind by some drunk going crazy fast, get T-boned by someone going through lights that they ought not to have, etc. and it’s much easier to die from those kinds of accidents if you aren’t secured and will rattle around inside like a ping pong ball or get launched out of a window. My literal job is in large part considering things that could go wrong for certain processes and establishing safe countermeasures against those.

This should be understood as a move to counter Turkey and perhaps coax Armenia closer to alignment with Israel.

There are two recently emerging factions in the vicinity. One has India, the UAE, Ethiopia, Greece, Israel and their dependents whereas the opposing block has Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt (which was originally with the UAE since they helped the military coup but flipped over Ethiopia and Gaza), Turkey, Qatar and their dependents. Both have also had elements opposed to the existing Iranian block although recently the group with Turkey and Pakistan and so on has been promoting peace with Iran and trying to make a ceasefire while Israel & the UAE want Trump on the ground there.

The faction Turkey is in generally wants to support Islamist leaning governments like the recognized governments of Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, at this point basically kind of a support of the status quo. Whereas the other faction has problems with governments like that and generally want to either flip the ideologies of those states to something less religious (ex. supporting Arab supremacist RSF over Islamist-leaning SAF in Sudan, or the UAE-backed military coup against the elected MB government in Egypt) or to split off smaller fragments from them by smaller nationalisms or sectarian issues (ex. backing the South Yemen separatists before Saudi Arabia rolled over them or Somaliland to become independent from Somalia).

If Armenia is drawn in then that would help Israel to contain Turkey somewhat since it would have Greece to the west, Armenia to the east and Israel to the south past the Turkish aligned government of Syria. That said it would be a rough road to swaying Armenia because Israel has previously heavily supported Azerbaijan since both countries were heavily against Iran, and Israel has not been treating the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem well. But, it does have good relations with other members of the faction such as buying a huge number of weapons from India and I think the UAE just cut a sweet economic deal with Armenia.

One thing I think will be interesting is how this develops with Azerbaijan and Iran. Obviously, Azerbaijan is cold on the matter of the Armenian genocide because some of the Armenians fleeing the genocide into Russian controlled lands organized militias that saw Azeris as the same as the Turks who killed them and began fighting with them. These militias quickly established on both sides began ethnic cleansing each other and started the ball rolling on ethnic polarization and converting previously mixed areas to monoethnic ones. Also Enver Pasha, a great villain of the Armenian Genocide, is actually seen way better in Azerbaijan than even Turkey because the Islamic Army of the Caucasaus that he established and his brother commanded rolled back the Dashnak and Bolshevik forces responsible for massacres against Azeris like the March Days up until they were forced to turn back when the Turkish capital at Istanbul got exposed and surrendered following Bulgaria’s capitulation. Even as they were leaving they armed local Muslim militias which put them on a better footing than they would have been, so such figures are regarded positively in Azerbaijan’s history although they are reviled elsewhere.

On between Iran and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan has been very staunchly secular and heavy-handed in response to Iranian preaching in its country as Aliyev detailed in Wikileaks cables (he’s on the record in the Bush era as saying that the country “would end” if even a small number of more traditionally religious Azeris come as refugees from Iran as a reason for not wanting a hypothetical war against Iran to start) and since they both were hostile to Iran Azerbaijan bought many weapons from Israel while building up the military after it was soundly defeated in the first NK war. In the Wikileaks cables Aliyev was very suspicious of Erdogan and did not seem to have a good relation at all to start with because he considered him to be too religious. But it seems their partnership has grown far stronger since then. Something interesting recently was that despite the partnership with Israel, Azerbaijan seems to have only been struck by one missile from Iran, which Iran promptly claimed was actually not from them when Azerbaijan bristled at it. That’s nothing compared to the barrage fired at many of the other neighbors despite arguably having more justification. Perhaps a thaw is occurring between the two behind the scenes, maybe facilitated by Turkey and Pakistan’s roles in trying to secure a ceasefire. On the flip side, if Armenia becomes perceived as getting closer ties to Israel, that could be viewed as hostile to Iran if that happens which could possibly make their traditionally positive relations grow more cold.

A surprising web of politics can go into a simple recognition of history.