You see the problem there, right?
You don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so ask it to help you believe in it, even though you know it's not real (and is an insult to your intelligence and beliefs), just abandon reason and rationality until you believe (in something you know is false and harmful)....and forever after. Who's going to do that?
Edit: conversely, if God hasn't verified his word, why would you contradict him by trying to do it yourself? Don't you think he knows his own plan better than you?

No, it's kicking the key out of that lock some guy looking for money and control told you is a prison you are in that's inescapable unless you buy his key (and pay him for keeping that key for you). Rejecting religion means you reject the entire "lock/key/prison" concept.

Third choice, admit sin is a construct of humans to control others more easily and ignore it as the fraud it is.
Remember, bearing false witness is a sin (as is the pride you feel for sharing it), and just because you believe it doesn't make it less false. Better to keep quiet about stuff you can't prove, according to Christianity.

Edit: don't think I didn't notice that you didn't even attempt to answer either question.
How to reconcile the blatant self serving fact that religion requires you to believe that belief in it erases all sin besides disbelief, which must be a sin worse than murder, rape, torture, etc, and is the one sin that was not erased by Christ?

Pssh, whatever -[ from drug dealer to slingin' nachos from a truck - Welcome to California mothafucka! Seriously, it seems like everyone does that shit. I knew a construction worker who took it one step further and served bourgeois creme brule from a cart. Ain't nothing special, but better than working for the man or destroying the world in tech!

No Netflix for me, and no luck on a quick search of torrents, but I'll keep my eye out for that show/series.

Many metrics to compare. Ecologically, that system sounds great for static locations with enough of an elevation gradient and reservoir areas to make it work. On the other hand it seems like the ecological damage done by constructing batteries, factories, and disposing of them is likely quite small compared to many other alternatives, particularly fossil fuels (which also have long-term scarcity concerns on top of plenty of other issues).

A major advantage of battery tech over hydro storage would be mobility. If the thing consuming energy doesn't sit in one place, hydro storage won't work. Another somewhat less significant advantage is the ability to install anywhere -- a battery farm recharged by mains and/or a solar/wind farm could be installed in places where hydro storage couldn't. And for one more item in favor of batteries, I'd wager that the land area footprint required for batteries is much smaller per kWH stored, although that might be wrong for extremely large reservoirs (ie. a hydroelectric dam, pretty much). But by the time you're getting to that large scale, the location requirements and ecological disruption are also much more extreme.

Anyway, I don't mean to pooh-pooh the idea of hydro storage -- it really does seem like a very good and ingenious idea where it would be applicable. But there's certainly room for improved battery tech, too. I don't think that we're going to get fully or even significantly weaned off of fossil fuels quite as fast as the video would have us hope for, either. Fossil fuels were the primary tool in our toolbox for a LONG time. And as the saying goes, since all we've had is that "hammer", we've started to think of everything as a nail.

Yes but the printer cost 5x as much as other printers and is made from the same plastic construction which calls into question how long the printer will actually last.

I think we can all tone down on the insults in these already over-heated times... They speak in their regional accents, I speak my own... no big deal.

My blood boils easily too during conversation, but online, I try to be calmer.

IMO when throwing insults we usually end up just speaking pass each other, nothing constructive gets done.

But get ya, I'm 100% with you. Analogy well articulated.

I certainly see the artistic sensibility there. It's cool and unique, but in the end it left me feeling disturbed. Modifications to public infrastructure should be strictly discouraged.

Yes, I understand that a handful of 3" lag bolts to hold up your shelf and table are unlikely to affect the structural integrity of the bridge, but bridges and supports span the gamut from earthquake-ready to collapsing under their own poor construction.

This guy's modifications are unlikely to cause a serious problem, but what about the next guy who decides to make more serious alterations? The potential risk for serious cost and injury aren't worth the coolness factor.

Ah. Thank you.

And still. Latin men and Italian men have more in common emotionally than they do Americans.

I am sooo looking forward to the time when American men break free from the box that they have been stuffed into by society.

Women have been at it, breaking free, for decades now and have a ways to go still.

We are all suffering from constructs from our youth. I swear.

Holy Fuck!! Google "Trump Bonwit Teller":

https://www.fastcodesign.com/90137202/hey-remember-when-trump-destroyed-precious-art-history

New York Times:
"Plain as the building might be, the entrance was like a spilled casket of gems: platinum, bronze, hammered aluminum, orange and yellow faience, and tinted glass backlighted at night. In 1929 American Architect magazine called it “a sparkling jewel in keeping with the character of the store.”


"Upon learning about the historic building’s imminent demolition, and recognizing the cultural value of its ornamentation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art convinced Trump to remove portions of the historic facade and donate them to the institution."

"Soon he was backpedaling, after realizing that it would take two more weeks and $32,000...to properly take the reliefs off the building. Using his fake alter ago, a “Trump spokesperson” named John Baron, he told the New York Times in 1980: “The merit of these stones was not great enough to justify the efforts to save them.” His construction workers chopped up the metalwork with torches and let the sculptures fall to the ground to crack into smithereens."

Two, 15 foot high, irreplacable, Art Deco bas-relief sculptures smashed by Trump to save $32,000 in costs to remove them.

Impressive firing precision.
The whole construction of it struck me as something I could not do (and not just because of freetime™) because I do not KNOW gun manufacturer and which steps can be rough and which precise.

#1 bluetooth uses a slight offshoot of mpeg2 audio compression which gets worse because you are most likely recompressing something already compressed with mpeg and that makes things even worse. This is the strength of AptX, it is an audio compression designed to not get exponentially worse when dealing with mpeg compressed audio. THAT SAID! Anyone know what phone he is using? The GOLD phantom supports AptX, so if he uses a samsung/htc/lg phone he would have been using AptX.

#2 speaker construction, it is an overblown Flip3 with radiators on the side. The radiators are designed to capture the back pressure of speakers and convert it into more audible sound waves, very good at saving the low frequencies and directing them back at the listener. The problem is it is a secondary uncontrolled speaker. This means your sound balance can go out of wack. Perfect for a $79 portable speaker, not ideal for a $3000 home theater setup. Also the speaker appears to be..mono? so you need 2 of them for stereo?

Yea, sorry, you can buy speakers that are not much bigger than this, hell you can buy a SET of front facing speakers and a good sub for $3000 and do better.

If Hinkley Point C is any indication, you're not going to find someone to finance/build a nuclear power plant, not in a capitalist society.

It's a massive upfront investment that private entities are basically allergic to; it cannot be insured due to the massive damage caused if things go south on you, so you need the government to act as a backstop; the price you'd have to charge per MWh is humongous compared to solar/wind, so you need massive subsidies, and that's without the ridiculous amount of rent-seeking corporations insist on nowadays.

That, to me, sounds like private is out. Hinkley Point C is being built by EDF, aka the French state, and EDF is struggling not be dragged into the abys by Areva, after the EPR in Flamanville is nothing short of a financial disaster. And we're not even talking about the troubles they are in for having fudged the specifications on the pressure vessels of more than 20 French power plants. Cost-cutting measures, as always.

So, which capitalist state is going to pick up the tab? Any volunteers? Over here, we cannot even get bridges fixed before they collapse...

And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I would want a profit-oriented enterprise or austerity-supporting government construct something like an NPP these days. Look at the construction sites at Flamanville and Olkiluoto, they are modern towers of Babylon, with subcontractors of subcontractors from 30 different countries working for povery wages. Anyone think either of these, should they ever be finished at all, will come even close to the safety standards layed out in their official plans?

Your video, Crane Collapse During Bridge Construction In Italy, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

In Canada, we like to mix up both systems. We get our weather temperatures in Celcius , but we prefer our pool temperatures in Fahrenheit. Construction plans are laid out in millimeters, but materials are sold in inches (thank you USA). So, we have to be bilingual in units as well, eh.

I agree that NoScript tends to make it a hassle to get basic functionality out of the vast majority of the web. You have to play around with allowing scripts from some domains and not others, on pretty much every page you visit.

...Which is pretty scary, if you think about it. Are all of those cross-site scripts beneficial or even necessary from a user standpoint? Hell no. Users stand to gain nothing from all that crap running. From our perspective, they just increase load times and data usage, often compounded with auto-reloading. We should have control over that stuff in all circumstances, but it becomes absolutely critical in mobile internet where we generally don't have as much processing power AND the vast majority of people have data usage caps.

Basically what I'm saying is, the admitted fact that NoScript tends to make the web unusable is a symptom of a deeper problem with how the web is constructed these days.

If you like the idea of NoScript, but generally find it too high-maintenance, you might want to try Privacy Badger. It requires somewhat less user input with regards to which trackers/scripts get blocked, instead going with defaults based on "trustworthiness" as measured by algorithms from the EFF. Those defaults can be tweaked if you desire, also.

I usually run a Firefox (or Pale Moon) client that is extremely locked down. UBlock Origin, NoScript, Privacy Badger, Self-Destructing Cookies, sometimes Ghostery, etc. I use that as my default browser, and take the time to fine-tune the controls in NoScript, element hiding in uBlock, etc. for sites that I visit regularly.

But frequently, I'll find a link to some article that I want to read and notice that the page content won't load at all since it requires some nonsensical script. In those cases, if I don't want to take the time to fiddle with NoScript etc. permissions, I copy the URL and fire up Chrome in incognito mode, with only uBlock Origin.

Probably not worth the hassle for most people, but I guess I'm kicking and screaming my way into this brave new world.