Every single person I have explained this to looks at me like I'm an idiot fabricating how I imagine something works in real life yet don't really get how it works. "Data mining for digital money by solving math problems that create that money out of thin air?"

re: Internet/totalitarianism/control of information, every single government tries to control information, the media, public opinion, and uses the internet as a tool for that goal (just like tv, radio, print, etc). The internet/access to information in and of itself does not guarantee greater accuracy/truth of that information, and unless the population is educated, respectful, and capable of critical thinking it can easily become little bubbles of echo chambers and a playground for griefers. What good did widespread internet availability do for the last US election? has the internet made americans more free, or more easily monitored and controlled? what good is it for cuba for cubans to have access to world of warcraft, so they can neglect their children who starve to death while they grind up to the next level? has the internet prevented mainstream media from fabricating news / pushing their agendas, or has it given more people a platform for fabricating news, anonymously? yeah, im not saying the internet is all bad, of course there are other very useful applications for it, but its not a magic "improve society" wand.

final thing i want to say, I have several friends who studied in cuba as exchange students in the late 90s, early 00s and yes, they had to make treks to specific places for access but they were able to send emails and such, so this piece is not factually accurate. If the cuban govt was so dead set on stopping people from communicating, im pretty sure they would identify network cables hanging in the middle of the street and easily follow them back to your apartment, not to mention detect wifi networks setup all over their tiny island.

To be fair, you were taught this in school if you were taught wave particle duality and the double slit experiment. Look at this. Now imagine a particle bouncing along in very small steps (quantum leaps if you will), and the direction it goes depends on the strength and orientation of the wave where it lands. You may never have been told to think about it like that, but that's what makes physics so amazing that sometimes all it takes is for someone to think about it slightly differently. The information was there all along, but who would imagine the 'particle' bit of an electron interacting with the 'wave' bit - the electron interacts with itself?

I absolutely love it, it's amazing, and simple and beautiful. It may provide insights into new ways we can model quantum behaviour, it might open up new questions to ask.

There's things I'd like to know. First, if the standing waves generated at each step in the droplet's progression interact with each other, the droplet is reacting according to waves it made in the past - what implications does that have for the notion of real particles in a spacetime continuum? For the double slits experiment to work in that model - in the ball on a rubber sheet sense - the sheet would have to stay warped to some extent after the ball had passed. In the quantum sense of the real double slits experiment, we would say it IS a wave, passes through both slits and appears according to statistical probability (the diffraction pattern).

Presumably several droplets released along the same path would go on to take a different route through the slits, to create a diffraction pattern as it must. Perhaps because of fluctuations in the temperature or density of the water at different locations? Is that a limitation of the model or an indicator about the nature of the fabric of spacetime? Perhaps even due to quantum fluctuations in the water particles - the water is never the same twice even if its perfectly still each time - which would potentially mean we're cyclically using quantum mechanics to explain quantum mechanics and we actually haven't explained very much.

The philosophy bit: But this reaches to the heart of the issue with quantum mechanics and perhaps science in general. How accurately can we model reality? The reality is beyond our ability to see, so we can only recreate simpler versions that are always wrong in some way... our idea of what happens - our models - can never be 100% because only a particle in spacetime can perfectly represent a particle in spacetime.

Scientific results and definitions are always defined with limits - "it works like this, within these confines, under these conditions, with these assumptions." There are always error margins. We are always only ever communicating an idea between different consciousnesses, and that idea will never be as true to life as life itself.

Sorry for the wall of text, it's a great and provocative experiment.

I don't care about the timing, political motivation, etc. etc. of this discovery of new emails. I think only 2 things matter:

1) Are they real / legitimate. But with all of the previous leaks, I never saw the Clinton camp trying to suggest that anything was fabricated. Taking stuff out of context to make it appear worse than what it arguably is doesn't count count as "fabricated". As much as I dislike Clinton, I have to give her credit for dealing with the out of context stuff so far in the proper way -- fill in the context so that people can make up their own minds (like some of the Wall Street speech excerpts, "public and private position", etc.).

2) Do they show anything actually criminal, even it is relatively minor. Capone went down for tax evasion, because that was the only thing they could successfully and concretely pin on him. And yet justice was served by going forward with that.

IF (and it remains a big if) these new emails end up meeting both of those criteria, I have absolutely zero sympathy for the whining that already has and will continue to erupt from the Democrat party.

Being a candidate in a presidential election paints a giant target on you and guarantees that your past is going to be under the microscope. If you've got skeletons in your closet, there is a very high chance for them to be discovered. Trump has had a well-deserved taste of that already -- maybe it is Clinton's turn now.

I think her arms are a bit restricted in their motion, too, because of the stiffness of the stretched fabric.

But really, I think she could get out of it if she wasn't having a panic attack. She's safe and will be fine but at this point she has ceased to function rationally and is just freaking out. It might be sad if it wasn't so damn funny...

Well said Newtboy .

They resemble gangs / thugs more often than not anymore with absolutely no problem fabricating lies to try cover up the truth every time someone gets killed.
I'm no fan of lies coming from the left or right, cop lover or cop hater so starting with the telling the truth police.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Yay - I knew it was coming - and here we are. I'm in furious agreement with my esteemed colleague @lucky760. You are woven into the fabric of this community. Badge and song are on their way ... (in the usual 2-3 weeks)

Thanks, but don't be sorry, my life is good even with my issues.

Yes, unethical is still unethical, and lying is always unethical. Stop lying (by omission or exaggeration) and tell the whole truth about these things, even when some of that truth works against your goals/narrative, and I'll stop contradicting you. Your insistence on pretending the worst practices are the norm, and that ethical animal treatment is an outlier is my issue, because I know it's not true from actual experience, not propaganda. Read my comments carefully and you'll see my issue is with your exaggeration and hyperbolic blanket statements, not your goal to lessen animal suffering.

I think using exaggeration and lies to make a point is an admission that you have no honest point to make, or that you don't believe that the facts support you.
Since there is an issue with bad practices, I see the exaggeration and hyperbole as working AGAINST proper animal treatment....you offer people the opportunity to dismiss you completely when you do that. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and the clear truth, and I won't discredit anything, I won't be able to. The younger people need correct information, not exaggerated propaganda and lies. Only then can they make a real informed choice.
It's my same issue with the "truth" campaign against smoking. They lie and exaggerate, obfuscate and fabricate, and convince themselves the ends justify the means. I can almost never agree with that sentiment. Lies are lies and should be exposed at every chance, IMO.

If this hadn't ended with so many cops at the guys place, I'd say the news just took aerial footage of a guy commuting home from work one day, and voiced-over some fabricated narrative.

Actually, that's not a bad idea.

There's two big differences between them as far as voters see them. Both are disliked very much.

However, there's a large portion of the people who hate Hillary Clinton do it for completely fabricated reasons. This isn't to say that there aren't some reasons to hate her. But when Trump and the GOP are going around saying stuff like "Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the 2nd Amendment", which absolutely isn't true in the slightest, gosh, I wonder if there's a portion of the electorate who will hate her for a complete falsehood. Who could it be? Hmmmm....

Again, don't get me wrong, there's plenty to not like about her. I've said numerous things about the whole email thing, which I still can't believe she ended up doing something that stupid.

Trump? Well, I'm sorry, but he's said so many things at this point to piss so many groups off, they hate him for things that actually are true. He did target Muslims for discriminatory policies. He has said disparaging remarks about women, implying a news anchor who disagreed with him must be on her period, and women who get sexually harassed should find another job, not the people who were doing the sexual harassment. He's said most Mexican immigrants are rapists, murderers, and drug runners. And Hillary Clinton is mostly hitting on stuff like that, you know, stuff he's ACTUALLY said. In fact, one of her attack ads is just a barrage of clips of Trump saying Trumpy stuff with kids watching it. There's not a shred of evidence Hillary Clinton has ever come out in favor of completely abolishing the 2nd Amendment.

So, you can say half the country hates her, but come election day, when she wins by what appears at this point to be a margin larger than Obama thumped Romney, CLEARLY Americans like Clinton a heck of a lot more than Trump overall.

You'd also confirm the pickpocket was guilty, wouldn't you? Well I would - I don't just believe everything I see or hear. I didn't mention it explicitly because I expect everyone to question all of their sources all of the time, like I do. But I don't see how that would make it make less sense, rather that it is more or less accurate of a comparison...? anyway.

In light of that, I think my example not only makes sense but is more valid than yours because yours introduces feelings and bias towards the involved parties that only make metaphorical sense if you refer to jingoistic crap about blindly loyal American nationalism and fear/hatred of Russians somehow. Which is kind of the point I'm questioning in the first place; there is a huge difference between 'applying reasonable doubt to your sources' (your point) and using the Russian excuse to ignore the actual problem (my point).

Also has there ever been an American intelligence leak/failure that was NOT linked to the Russians? I hope we're not reverting to the kind of cold war style paranoia that 10 years ago we would have laughed at around here. Somewhere there's a flow chart in the White House that has 12 boxes on one side listing possible internal failures and fuck ups and they all point to one box on the other side saying "Blame Russia".

If you're genuinely worried about the source making the leak up and it all being just faked, you best take that up with Wikileaks. They have a very robust reputation, the kind that you don't earn easily. It doesn't make them right, but it means you have to make a strong point against them. I feel like it wouldn't be all that hard for anyone with the clearance to check and confirm if it was a Russian fabrication, and then a story confirming Wikileaks was talking bullshit, releasing Russian propaganda, would be huge news.

Good questions. My family operates farms for wheat and corn, and I've been involved in that process, so I can take a stab at answering the last bit:

Corn stalks get quite tall -- 6 feet / 2 meters or so. Each stalk usually has 1 or 2 ears of corn. On our farm, the experience I had suggests that each plant needs quite a lot of healthy leaves for Photosynthesis as well as quite a lot of available ground water. Irrigated corn often produces 2-3 times as many bushels per acre as compared to "dryland" / non-irrigated corn.

So the issues I can see potentially clashing between corn production and vertical farming are:

1) You'd have a greater space requirement for layers of corn since you'd need probably 8-10 feet per layer, as compared to what looks like 2-3 feet per layer for leafy vegetables in the video. Approximately one story per layer wouldn't allow for the massive footprint savings like in leafy plants without getting extremely tall, which would be expensive for water pumping etc.

2) Corn root systems are pretty deep to support a tall and relatively bulky stalk. Getting that to bite into a thin layer of fabric / recycled plastic to provide structural support for the plant would be difficult. I think you'd need to have a thicker bottom layer *and* to manually place further support lines on the stalks as the plants grow, which would get very labor intensive and therefore expensive.

3) The vertical nature of a corn stalk suggests that the overhead motion of the sun might be pretty important for getting light exposure onto all of the leaves. Fixed overhead lights might mean that the top leaves get plenty of light but the ones lower on the stalk would be shaded by those above and get nothing -- which isn't a problem if the sun progresses through low angles at sunrise/set to overhead at noon throughout a day. So you might have to have lighting that hits from all sides to account for that with corn, which would again add expense.

4) To maximize the output, corn needs a LOT of water. Pumping that up the vertical expanse to get lots of levels could easily get problematic. Corn will grow without optimal / abundant watering, and their misting system would likely be more efficient than irrigating to add ground water, but the main benefit of vertical farming seems to be high output in a small land footprint on the ground. So without LOTS of water, you'd be limiting that benefit.


So basically, my guess is that vertical farms are a fantastic idea for squat, spread out plants like lettuce, but a lot of the advantages disappear when you're talking about something tall like corn. I could easily be wrong about any/all of that though.

There's a difference between oppression and privilege. As a straight white male you start with advantages over other people. These aren't advantages of talent or intelligence, they're purely socially constructed for no good reason other than one group hoarding power and influence for centuries.

It's perfectly natural, but that doesn't make it right.

Individuals aren't responsible for the social fabric, but people should at least acknowledge their place in the scheme of things.

Also, I think it's important to note that 99.9% of whites deserve equal or more than what they currently have. The system is wildly skewed by the ultra-rich vacuuming up a massive share of wealth and influence. It's just that we deserve to live somewhat better, whereas many minorities deserve far better treatment than they've had historically and continue to have.

Wow Bob, I know I just defended your right to your opinion, and that people shouldn't attack you for it, but this is a lie. A complete fabrication. You should feel deeply ashamed of this bullshit. Even more so if you're just parroting some Republican talking point crap.

I'm legitimately going to miss this guy. And his role is not one easily replaceable; I cannot think of any other person who is so selfless yet inspired to continue to research the cold hard facts and saying it how it is. The status quo will be happy that he goes, but for millions - this guy remained a real inspiration. Someone who found the calling of anarchism at a very young age and never let go. He is someone who knows the historic truths as well as understanding the fabric of the mind to a somewhat tangible degree above others and without much personal infliction. The guy looks at facts and could care less about your opinion, or his own "opinion" or emotions on topics. He is an incredibly rare and crucial resource.