Vanta black isn't a paint, unless I'm mistaken. It's a material --the micro carbon tubules.

This is a water-based paint that --isn't toxic to you (Vanta is) if you touch it or ingest it.

So, it's a win of some sort.

I would not be averse to a very small nuke hitting just his house. Baby nuke? Micro Nuke? Teeny tiny itti bitti micro nuke tested in bikini?

It was pretty disappointing that they didn’t include small generators in these equations. My solar is on my roof, it only uses transmission lines when I make more than I use, and then it stays local. Same thing with small home wind turbines and micro hydro. All these non centralized generation methods are incredibly better than huge farms IMO.

1) No transmission needed, power is generated and used locally.
2) multiple generation methods are tied together, so when it’s dark and solar doesn’t produce, wind and micro hydro are still available vs giant single method “farms”.
3) decentralizing power generation hardens the entire grid, and individual adoptors, against infrastructure attacks. (That alone should sway the climate change denying nationalist crowd to buy in if they could still consider thoughts, sadly they can’t .)
4) barring an emp, the entire grid could not go down and power outages would be limited to tiny areas and be easily repaired in the future.

So this is absolutely true:

When I was 14, I wrote the (as far as I can determine) first parser-driven BBS in the world, basically creating the first purpose-driven, "multi-player" online adventure game, with the following caveats:

- Unis had such games themselves, but their access was limited to other university students and not the general public.

- It's also possible that someone else might have done the same thing before me, but I have never found any record of a such a BBS or online game existing prior to 1981.

The name of the BBS was 'New House of Wrath' and it featured a house that you explored via simple verb-noun syntax. Each room in the house was a BBS function (various text games which I wrote myself / a message base / a philez repository / a graffiti wall) as well as a simple underlying adventure in the style of Zork. The whole thing was written in sloppy TRS-DOS BASIC on a TRS-80 Model III and resided within 48k of memory including a primitive DB engine that I wrote. I still have a 8-pin dot-maxtrix print out of the code.

Shortly after my BBS went "online", a couple of multi-line BBSs sprung up, but these were straight BBSs without an overlying structure like mine.

At the time, I thought nothing of writing the BBS other than it was a fun thing to do. 80 Micro, the magazine that covered all things TRS-related, was going to write a story about my BBS, but nothing ever came of it. I ran it until about 1986 when I finally gave up because everyone was going to online service like Compu$erve and Prodigy.

I know I'll never get a single bit of credit for what I did, but I know what I did and I'm proud of my little contribution to the online world; that'll have to be enough.

A bit odd they're making an enormous concrete dam as a carbon emission offset, because cement makes .9lbs of CO2 for every lb of cement. (Cement makes up approximately 10% of concrete by weight...1 gallon of concrete weighs approximately 20 lbs, they used 21.4 million gallons) ....that's a shitload of CO2 for materials alone.
Plus big dams kill their rivers.
Hydro electric is not really green energy....not this kind of hydro electric anyway. Maybe micro hydro.

*promote
Not a silver bullet, but a useful system where it's feasible. I would like to see home systems designed that could store home solar/wind/thermal generation for later use. Batteries suck, are expensive, wear out relatively quickly, and are usually not "green". Micro pumped hydro could eliminate distribution issues (a big deal in California where they shut down the grid during wind storms now), and decentralizes power storage/generation, eliminating a major terrorist target, the power grid.

Um, hello? 'scuse me, yeah, over here? Ok, I have a question:
So, like, there's this thing in a nuke called a nuke. It kinda blows up and shit and it's made out of stuff that you really don't want to breathe in when it's in micro-fine dust. Let's say that this "nuke" thing got hit by a "go-ey fast" thing and got a bit of an ouchie. What would actually happen to that plutonium core? I know it wouldn't blow up, but wouldn't the fallout be worse than an explosion?

Safest...of those we discussed, maybe. It's certainly not safer than well designed solar, wind, micro hydro, wave/tidal, etc.

Some in Fukushima have seriously elevated risk for cancers, but no one died of radiation poisoning that I've heard of (but many still can't go home). Not true in Chernobyl. I've not seen claims of thousands dead since the very early days, but a short investigation shows estimates vary widely, from 4000-60000 early deaths from radiation related cancers, and even the lowest estimates are unacceptable. Direct radiation related deaths seem to be around 100 there.

It does seem that today the evacuations cause more deaths, likely because of safety measures required after Chernobyl and the fact that most are only exposed for extremely short times because they evacuated and are not allowed to return until exposure levels are low.

There are real, honest health concerns involved, including indirect impact caused by evacuations or shelter in place stress. That said, there's plenty of exaggerated fear mongering too.

Way too mush positive enthusiasm for a machine that is purely made to kill people. These human killing machines are brutal in their efficiency. I almost feel like the music should be a sound of dred with a somber tone explanation. Discussing them as entertainment seems wrong to me. Not only that, but this is the decommissioned ship, they didn't even get to the more modern ships which can kill way more people, more accurately, and at greater distances.

Of course, this is all to promote a video game, and they want you excited to buy and play their game, and pump them full of micro-payments. I also know their are people that thrive on guns and killing, but as a human being, to me, this seems very uncomfortable.

No, I'm not anti-video game, just anti-realism in video games and killing people. Give me Aliens and sci-fi, or demons and monsters any day

I understand. I'll grant that it seems a little "helicopter-parent" like to worry about this sort of thing. However, I do not agree that the transgressions are as harmful OR harmless as you suggest.

The Toy Story Examples again.
The one from Sid is itself an allusion to Star Wars where Darth Vader is torturing a soldier for information about the rebel base locations. If I'm not mistaken, that person is force-choked to death after his mind betrays him and gives Vader the info he needs.

Buzz approaches Woody after Sid steps out and commends him after the fact. "A lesser man would have talked under such torture."

Here is the encouragement. It doesn't matter if Sid is a good or a bad guy. Although, arguably, Sid isn't really a villain - just a kid who likes to play rough with his toys. But that's a different argument. I believe the encouragement is in the promotion of the idea that, put bluntly, torture is effective.

It's this idea, whatever the character motivation is at the time, nomatter who the character is, that encourages the use of torture as an acceptable means of extracting some kind of cooperation from the person being tortured- which is simply NOT true.

Why the pattern? why can't he be just ripping apart his toys like he did with the doll earlier?

I'm not fishing for 'micro agressions' - I'm against promoting the idea that torture works.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/08/world/does-torture-work-the-cias-claims-and-what-the-committee-found.html

"Time and time again, people with actual experience with interrogating terror suspects and actual experience and knowledge about the effectiveness of torture techniques have come out to explain that they are ineffective and that their use threatens national security more than it helps."
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/an_fbi_interrogator_on_the_effectiveness_of_torture/

I argue that presenting torture as something that DOES work encourages policy decisions that allow for torture as a means to an end. When in reality it's simply just some kind of revenge driven harm propaganda.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-rsquo-ve-known-for-400-years-that-torture-doesn-rsquo-t-work/

I kind of swing the other way on this. We live in a cruel, violent, unjust world. Talking about that is not automatically an endorsement of it. Making jokes about it is part of talking about it and an important coping mechanism. Yes, talking and joking about it CAN be done in a way that encourages it, but it's NOT automatic.

As per your Toy Story examples, the ultimate take away for the young audience exposed to it is that the violence/torture was a clear cut bad thing. When someone in your office pulls a prank on someone and the other party responds by jokingly threatening to kill them for it they aren't normalizing murder. Nobody comes away from that interaction with the idea that murder is somehow more acceptable or less bad.

We need to relax a little bit about looking for micro-aggressions and 'bad' culture in every little thing that people say or joke about,

Slavery has ZERO impact to today's society.


Everyone has the opportunity to become what ever one desires.
To hang on to the past is nothing more than a self inflicted wound.

My GGgrandfather was a laborer.
GFather was a plumber.
Dad was first to finish HS.
I was able to finish college.


Each generation trying to make the next a little better.

Also Cubans flooding Florida over last fifty years doing better than black counterparts

Illegals traveling thousand of miles for a chance of making a better life for themselves and family.

Yet you give blacks a pass to hang onto the crutch of the past.

Micro aggression! Really MICRO. If you are offended by micro anything then you are too thin skinned.

More Black Men Are In Prison Today Than Were Enslaved In 1850.
Knowing the past is important to understanding the future. There have been improvements, but there are still disparities too numerous to list. The thought that blacks make up excuses is just ignoring present realities they have to deal with.

As for getting over slavery, well Blacks have been free less then half the time they were enslaved in this country. Studies have even concluded the stressful, violent and brutal traumas experienced over lifetimes of generations of enslaved people may even be pass down to there offspring.

Epigenetics, if one believes in that sorta thing, could lead to explaining why on top of current modern day racial based micro aggressions, bias and abuses of power things within the Black population as a whole in america are still broken. Neither political party is willing to address that.