Awesome! Sounds quite Satrian-ish.

Pinch harmonics didn't jump out at me like they usually do in songs that feature them. Dunno if that is because my ear for identifying them isn't great, or if most songs that use them tend to lay them on pretty thick. Probably both.

Thailand, where I live now is called the "Land of Smiles". But I ran into some hiccups trying to fit in that conform to some of what the video said:

Basically, the "Land of Smiles" thing is pretty accurate -- generally Thais want to keep a (somewhat subdued) smile on their face. Even/particularly in frustrating/aggravating situations; Thais are extremely confrontation-averse and I think the smiling is a cultural adaptation to try to defuse those situations before they escalate.

BUT, when I first came here, I caught on to the "try to smile through all situations" culture but kind of went overboard on the enthusiasm in what I gather might be a typically American way. One time some Thais that I knew were introducing me to somebody that I hadn't met before. The new person didn't speak any English, and I couldn't speak much of any Thai at the time, so I was just trying to smile through the awkward second-hand introduction. Since I was just passively sitting back and smiling, the new person asked my friends if I was a "special person" -- a direct translation from Thai which means exactly the same thing that it does in English.

So I guess even in the "Land of Smiles", going overboard can make people think you're a bit dim...

Another thing to consider about solar and wind being cheaper (per kWh) is that both have quite a bit of economy of scale working for them. They will continue to get cheaper as we build and use more of them, but not a whole hell of a lot.

Modern nuclear, on the other hand, has pretty much zero economy of scale going for it at this point. If we bought in, not only could we completely eliminate coal (still gotta have something in times / areas that don't get a lot of sun or wind), but the costs would go down a LOT between 1st prototype components and stuff that settles out as standard before the thousandth one built.

On the one hand, having a guided experience like that from somebody that knows the "proper" way of doing things is a very good thing.

On the other hand, I hate snobbery when it becomes sort of evangelical to the point of "saving people from ruining their meal". Maybe they like "candy sushi" rolls, dipped into soy sauce mixed with wasabi to the point of being salt bombs. I do. AND I like good nagiri the "proper" way also.

Lawsuit for false advertising?

Overall, this seems rather analogous to bottled water. Penn and Teller did a brilliant "Bullshit" episode about bottled water back in the day. It got sifted, but is now dead. The entire episode (first half is about feng shui, second half about water) is available on vimeo, though:
https://vimeo.com/193125042

Long story short, most bottled water presents itself as coming from a mountain spring, or glacier, or whatever. But in reality, the vast majority is simply municipal water from whatever city the packaging plant is in, usually not going through any additional filtration or purification at all.

At least with water, it is possible to test for contaminants. Diamonds can be graded / assayed to certify some basic characteristics, but of course there is no straightforward way to track their history and know where they came from, etc. At least, not short of having a paper trail tracing it back to the place and time that it was mined, which could easily be faked.

Bottled water gets away with promoting an "image" of being sourced from mountain springs or whatever by never actually claiming that it is in a legal sense. Usually there is fine print available noting the location that the water came from / was packaged. This diamond company seems to go beyond that and to make claims about their diamonds that are impossible to actually prove. Hopefully they get nailed/shut down.

*promote

"Well, sometimes there's flavored condoms."

..."Why? .... Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

LOL

He makes a very persuasive argument.

But then, I think about how there are lots of counterexamples to the "legislation that gets out will be good legislation" bit. Patriot Act. DMCA. Citizens United. Homeland Security and Aviation and Transportation Security Acts.

I dunno. If there is a weakness in the system, perhaps it is that while the separation of powers theoretically makes it hard to get garbage in, it sure as hell also makes it nigh-on-impossible to get it out when any sneaks through.

Interesting. When I was in college, I got good mileage out of (in order of preference):

1: Not buying the book listed on the syllabus at all. LOTS of courses didn't assign any homework from the book, and covered all the information that would be on tests in lectures. So I never bought a book before it became clear that I would actually have to use it.

2: Buying used books, if at all possible directly from a student who took the course the previous semester. I never ran into the "new edition" problem mentioned in the video, and my major was Computer Science, which I'd think would tend to change more in a short period of time than most disciplines.

3: Sharing a single book (and the purchase price) between 3-10 other students. Even in the few courses that did have homework (Engineering Physics and Calc 2 had a lot for me), it was quite helpful to share a book with several other students and work through the problems together whenever homework was assigned.


So this never really seemed like a big problem for me, although I guess that doesn't help much for High School textbooks, where we generally only have to pay for them in the form of taxes.

Kinda forgot about Thug Notes, which is a shame because they are great. Thanks for bringing it back to mind!

Really hard not to get a sense of smug superiority since uBlock Origin has kept me from seeing any of this Youtube ad crap for years. And somehow, I don't even feel guilty about it.

While the uninformed masses wallow pitifully in a mire of advertising, I gloriously dance on the surface of their pit of writhing flesh. I, God among insects, transcend their hellish torture of video ads and clickthroughs, reveling in the ability to watch whatever I want as soon as I click the play button! Muahahahaha!

...OK, maybe that strayed slightly beyond "smug superiority" and into "disturbing sociopath" territory. But it still feels good!

He's a bit out there -- in a good fun way.

A full-on double blind study would be interesting, but fairly prohibitively expensive to get a good sample size. Especially since there doesn't seem to be any practical application beyond satisfying curiosity...

Wikipedia has some interesting thoughts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_interracial_kiss_on_television

I guess that the answer depends on subjective criteria for definitions of "interracial" and "kiss". Along with ignoring that it was done earlier in the UK.

None of that takes away from the importance and impact of the kiss in Trek.

Shame it had to appear in such a crap episode otherwise, though.

I had never heard it claimed that cigars pose less/different cancer risks than cigarettes.

Google search provides mixed (as you might expect) results.

Cancer.gov, the Mayo Clinic, and WebMD all seem to suggest that cigar smokers in general tend to have lower rates of lung cancer than cigarette smokers (because they generally don't inhale, which I didn't know), but higher than non-smokers. And they have comparable or possibly higher rates of other cancers (oral, esophageal ... pancreatic) as compared to cigarette smokers.

Several results suggest that there is less data about cigars, results aren't statistically significant, etc. etc. and that they believe that cigars are much safer than cigarettes, if not entirely safe. But frankly, the pages I see (in a cursory search that I don't really have a personal stake in) promoting that view don't seem as ... trustworthy to me as the Mayo Clinic, or Healthcare Triage videos like this one (that list references right in the video).


No holier-than-thou attitude intended. ...Although I can say that I'm personally very glad I never acquired a taste for tobacco products of any kind. And a very low interest in alcohol consumption -- I go months on up to a year+ between drinks of booze without ever missing it. I sometimes avoid social situations because of smoke, which I suppose is a downside. But on the other hand, I'm enough of an introvert that avoiding social situations is probably something I'd be doing anyway... So at the very least I have more money to waste on other things since I'm not a smoker or much of a drinker.

Awesome to have real concrete information presented in a way that seems very distinct from what you'd get from sources on the far ends of the spectrum, like High Times or the DEA.

I'm quite surprised that smoking pot seems to carry an increased risk of bronchitis, like tobacco, but apparently NOT lung cancer (unlike tobacco). Are the carcinogens in tobacco cigarettes all from additional ingredients? Could people be growing their own tobacco and rolling their own cigarettes and avoiding one of the biggest health consequences? If so, shouldn't there be a market for tobacco cigarettes without any added ingredients?


I have never smoked pot OR tobacco. A lot of my reasons for avoiding either come down to a hatred of and pretty real sensitivity to / negative reactions to exposure to smoke. Some of my bias against that transfers into bias against pot in general, since smoking it is the default method.

At the same time, it seems ridiculous to me that pot is double-secret schedule 1 illegal while alcohol and tobacco are both perfectly legal. Especially when it seems apparent (although I don't really know what I'm talking about since I've never used it myself) that the intoxicating effects of pot are comparable to but generally LESS dangerous than alcohol, and the negative health consequences of pot are FAR LESS than either alcohol OR tobacco.

Getting real facts and knowledge out there like this video is doing has to have a positive effect on that very questionable policy.