China. A second socialist revolution. First, there’s actually precedent for it there. Revolutionaries could call themselves restorationists, promising to fulfill the original revolution’s abandoned mission. Maybe a version that actually empowers workers and builds bottom-up social democracy. Socialism without the authoritarianism. What better country for a socialist revolution than the one that gave us 9-9-6? China is ripe for a socialist revolution.

Most people who breathe are good people. Most people running the big AI companies are not. That is the difference.

You’re ignoring that the real problem is that when AI is concerned, tech companies have demonstrated that they have a rapist’s understanding of consent.

Exactly. Classic monkey’s paw. You end up dying homeless and in the gutter. On your corpse the police find millions of dollars worth of checks to your name. You get to be a millionaire that dies of hunger and exposure to the elements.

Yes. Except in my mind it’s a monkey’s paw deal. You win endless discrimination lawsuits, but you just end up with a bunch of checks no bank will cash.

I’m pretty sure Ea-nāṣir stole it.

We moved into our new place in December. We had a fence post that needed replacing. The post was in a place that would work great for a fence gate. So I’m adding a new gate to our fence. This will serve to make the property as whole more accessible. It will also provide a means for those with mobility issues to enter the home without having to climb the big set of stairs at the front door.

I decided to make a proper project out of it. I could have just put in a simple gate, but I decided to go for something grander. I’m building a pergola gate! I’ve finished the columns and installed the first of two beams this evening.

The foundation of the gate are two 8’ long steel fence posts driven 3’ into the ground with a sledge hammer. The posts are approximately 5"x7", each made from five 2x6s laminated together. The beams are made from two cedar 2x6s edge joined together into a 2x12 beam. There will be two beams all together.

Tomorrow I’ll hang the second beam, add some cross pieces at the top of the beams, add some foundation reinforcement, and start building the actual fence gate.

Covid-19.

No you’re thinking of Woody from Toy Story. He died in an Apartheid South African prison in 1978.

Those chicks at the supply store are for small hobby farms. The rotisserie chicken comes from a big factory farm. That factory farm either doesn’t have to pay for chicks at all (they just breed their own), or they buy them for a fraction of the retail cost by buying them in bulk directly from suppliers.

Sure. My point is that every generation that’s existed since mass consumer culture began will have their versions of this. Contrast Precious Moments figurines among Boomers to Funko Pops for Millennials.

Behold the inevitable future of funko pops.

As someone with some profound ADHD that has affected my career, I have to say, I would be fucking amazing in the Star Trek universe. For someone with an interest-based focus ability, a society where the standard of social merit is, “do cool shit you’re passionate about,” would be Heaven. I can do things. I can do amazing things. When I’m passionate about something, I can move mountains. But stick me in a cubicle and ask me to do the same grind day in, day out? I really struggle. Some people say they would just disappear forever into the Holodeck. But for me, the coolest thing about the Star Trek universe is that regular people can simply do whatever they’re most passionate about, without concern for monetary profit.

This or Star Trek are the only serious answers.

Thanks!

I’m not familiar. What misdeeds have the Ubuntu folks been up to?

We use the barter economy here. You have to personally go to Jaybone’s house and perform mutual aid sexual favors for them.

That article is unfortunately devoid of the information we need.

I however managed to find the Nature article that it appears to be based on.

https://annas-archive.pk/scidb/10.1038/nature02417/

Trees do face limits on their height due to the limits of the lengths capillary forces can draw water up through their cells. However, the figure quoted is from a regression analysis of living trees. It’s not a prediction of how tall trees could evolve if certain environmental stresses were removed. It’s a prediction of the maximum height achievable by California Redwoods.

From the paper:

At reserves further north and closer to the coast, stronger storms may explain the lower heights (,100 m), yet similar relationships of water potential and d13 C to height 27 as we observed in the tallest redwoods. At the drier inland margin of redwood’s natural distribution in northern California, maximum tree height is lower (,80 m), yet treetop values of minimum water potential (21.9 MPa) and maximum d13 C (222‰) are similar to those at 110 m in the tallest redwoods. Thus a similar physiological ceiling may be reached at different physical heights depending on water availability, with storm damage reducing realized heights at sites that are otherwise optimal

So note that even though the trees on the coast have moisture conditions, they still reach lower heights than those further inland.

The key thing to keep in mind is that the current maximum height achievable by living tree species is not the maximum height of trees allowable by physics. For example, instead of relying only on osmotic pressure, trees might evolve a staged-lift system, where they have upper reservoirs that feed one into the next. This is how tall skyscrapers handle their plumbing systems. A hundred story building will have water tanks at different levels rather than just one big tank on the roof. This prevents the need to have pipes at the base of the skyscraper capable of surviving 100 stories worth of water pressure.

There’s no need for trees on our planet to evolve such mechanisms. The limits for wind kick in at similar heights to the limits of the water transport mechanisms trees have evolved. But other mechanisms would have different limits. There just isn’t any evolutionary pressure to develop them.

Although, the paper does make being a tree scientist sound like an amazing job.

We accessed tree crowns by shooting arrows trailing filament over branches with a powerful bow. Rope was then hauled over the branches and climbed via mechanical ascenders. Access to the treetop was achieved by arborist-style techniques. Heights were measured by lowering weighted fibreglass measuring tapes from the treetop to average ground level.

Wind dominates the morphological structure of trees. Weight is not the limit to tree height. Trees could grow many times their current maximum height on a planet with no wind. You could hang iron weights on most trees much greater than the weight of the tree. As long as the wind wasn’t blowing hard, the tree would stand.

Wind, the movement of something as light as air, is able to dominate the form land plants have evolved into.

Now realize that water has a thousand times the density of air.

There’s a reason all it takes to cause a local explosion of diversity in sea life is to dump something solid like a subway car into the sea. Water has so much momentum behind it that life struggles just to remain firmly fixed in one place while subject to waves and current.

EDIT: Also one other major structural factor: soil! Dry well compacted soils are stronger than moist loose soils. The sea bed is an ever-churning bed of loose water logged mud and sand. So not only are ocean plants subject to much greater lateral loads due to the 1000x density of water over air, but those ocean plants also must cling to the worst foundation imaginable.

I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero till the end of the night