Are you referring to fascist dictator "nazi" or literal badge-wearing capital-N Nazi? There's a difference. I'd argue that one is a general coarse criticism while the other is a very specific accusation that might pass judicial muster as defamatory.

That's the real crux here. Comments accusing Obama of being socialist/communist/Nazi (fascist or literal) generally are not taken seriously, since anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see these people don't even know what those words mean.

But that does not, IMHO, constitute "political speech." I don't approve of people suing over hurt feelings either, but those kinds of comments don't really deserve 1st amendment protection.
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I think there's room to make a distinction between general insult "nazi" aka fascist as you describe, and actual, literal White supremacist anti-jew swastika-wearing "Hitler did nothing wrong" capital-N Nazi. Those people do exist, you know...
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Defamation, along with obscenity and inciting panic or violence, have never been free speech. Slander and libel are civil crimes that you can be sued for in court, and it's been that way since day one. To facilitate enforcement of defamation laws, the court has decided it's acceptable to try and de-anonymize the poster in question.

Just because the words are about a political candidate, does not make it political speech. This case is not the same as speaking unpopular political views and opinions - that WOULD be protected speech. It's the difference between supporting Nazi idealism (free speech) and accusing someone of being a Nazi (not free speech).
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$5 billion in PROFIT doesn't sound like poor sales to me...
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Roughly 4 out of 5 asteroids are Chondrites - basically giant piles of fused gravel. Nickel-iron asteroids only account for ~5% of known bodies.

Of course, breaking up an asteroid will not help if you don't deflect a significant portion of the mass. 40 million tons of stuff traveling at thousands of kilometers per second carries a certain amount of energy, and that energy isn't going to go away just because you break it up into 40 million 1-ton bits.
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I don't disagree with you, but McD's is a ~$30B/yr corporation. The average McD's franchise makes more sales in a day than the average In-n-Out makes in a whole year.

It's no surprise at all that you can make a superior product, but you can make much more money selling a cheaper product that millions of people still buy. Quality is clearly not the most important factor here.

And yes, it sounds very much like you are more an exception. There is a very sad reality that exists beyond the one you're familiar with, I'm afraid.
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I've pretty much offered answers to your questions already.

A 35-lbs bottle of Mel-Fry will cost you about $25 if memory serves. That's roughly $0.72/lb. It's a liquid at room temperature meaning it's safe and easy to handle (not handling hot oils). A single load of oil will last at least a week.

A 5-gallon pail of beef tallow - roughly the same amount - will run you at least twice that. It's a solid at room temperature so it needs to be handled hot to drain it. It will last *maybe* a week in a fryer if you use it every day.

This may shock you, but people don't actually want a higher quality product! They might say they do, but they will almost always go for the cheaper product unless it has a really bad reputation. Combine that with corporate profit motive and you get a race to the bottom; provide a product that's just barely good enough to keep customers satisfied and costs to a bare minimum. Yay capitalism!
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McDonalds uses a blend which contains hydrogenated soybean oil.

As for "not worth it" I really have to ask: What criteria do you use to define "worth it"?

I know one popular brand of fry oil is Mel-Fry, which contains trans fats. Fry-On is another popular brand. The reason places use these blends is they last longer (fewer oil changes, less waste and less to buy), resist burning better (higher temps = shorter cooking times, less oil absorbed into the food) and add less oily flavor to the food overall. Other than the trans fat thing, there is virtually no reason NOT to use commercial frying blends.

Check the dumpsters behind your favorite restaurants or simply ask what they use in their fryers.

I'm not trying to completely demonize trans fats or anything, but I *am* saying that, much like high fructose corn syrup, it's virtually unavoidable because it's literally everywhere.
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First, it's important to note that foods can be sold as "trans-fat free" even if they contain 0.49 grams of trans fat per serving, because they're allowed to round off to the nearest gram. You need to check the ingredients list for the word "hydrogenated" to know for certain - if there are no hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, then it will not have any trans fat.

Just about anything that's deep fried commercially, either prepackaged or restaurants. There are exceptions, of course, but it's commonly used in commercial cooking because trans fats resist going rancid (bacteria and mold have just as much difficulty metabolizing it as your body does) - it lasts longer and is therefore cheaper.

Since trans fats are semisolid at room temperature, they are often found in vegetable-based spreadable fats. Margarine is basically pure trans fat. Shortening and frosting (spreadable fat mixed with sugar and color) are also likely to contain it, if not be entirely made from it. naturally, anything made with shortening like pastry crusts will have trans fat in it as a result.

Non-dairy creamers can contain trace amounts. Microwave popcorn is possible because the kernels are in a solid lump of trans fat that melts when heated. Milkshakes and the like can have quite a lot of it.

Any kind of commercially produced baked good - again, trans fat resists going rancid so it helps the shelf life. Cookies, cakes, crackers, etc.

So yeah, unless you're a strict vegan who only eats stuff from your own farm for "decades", you've almost certainly eaten something with added trans fats.
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Of course you do.

You need a citation for a basic experiment? Really? Um, okay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

This is literally an experiment that middle school children do in science class. I didn't think a citation would be necessary for basic physics.

Less wind due to buildings means the CO2 is slower to disperse - but that does not mean it never disperses. Otherwise, after nearly a hundred years of urban activity, there would be no breathable air left in the cities.

The idea that CO2 is more concentrated at the sources is not what I'm contesting - my claim is it does not stay there. By way of analogy, the concentration of pollution near a sewer pipe discharging into the ocean will be higher near the pipe, but that doesn't mean the pollution never spreads out.

I really don't know where you're coming from here. You are wrong about heat capacity, you are wrong about how CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere, and you are wrong about the role water vapor plays in the whole thing. I'm not defending any ideas here other than basic physics.

Sounds like you're projecting, really.

The references you provided were all about irrigation area. I'm not contesting that we've done a lot to transform the landscape, and I'm not contesting that human activity increases water evaporation.

I asked you to provide support for your claims about the effects of atmospheric water, specifically the claim anthropomorphic sources of additional humidity are "on the same order of magnitude as would be expected for the observed warming."
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No, heat capacity is a physical property of a substance - the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of that substance. The IR absorption spectrum has absolutely nothing to do with heat capacity.
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1) Nitrogen and oxygen are transparent to IR, so for all intents and purposes, the "blanket" in this analogy is transparent too.

2) You are conflating heat capacity with spectral absorption. These are not even remotely related.

No, it most certainly is not. You take a transparent vessel, put a heat lamp in front of it, and stand on the other side. Normal air? You can feel the heat through the vessel. Fill the vessel with CO2 gas, and you immediately notice a significant reduction in the heat felt. You can quantify the decrease using IR sensors/FLIR cameras and plate thermometers. Very straightforward.

Thank you for basically repeating what I just said, glad we're in agreement.

Wrong on two levels.

For one, there's no concept of "saturation" at work here - CO2 will absorb ALL of the IR energy in the appropriate wavelengths. It's not like the molecules get "full" and let the rest of the IR pass through. The only factor that determines how much of the total radiation is absorbed is the density of the gas: More gas, more absorption.

For two, CO2 has three major peaks and one minor peak, not just one, and they aren't terribly sharp.

CO2 doesn't quite work that way. The atmosphere is constantly being mixed, especially at high altitudes, so the CO2 does not stay where it is generated for very long. That's what makes this a GLOBAL problem.

Deserts are cold at night because there's no mass to hold the heat. The sand does not hold much thermal energy and there is no entrapment of the radiation from other surfaces because it's basically flat. All emitted thermal radiation quickly escapes into the atmosphere instead of being trapped by buildings and trees.

This is another experiment you can try: Park your car overnight such that it is half under a tree. If it dips below the dew point overnight, you'll likely find that the parts of your car that have a clear view of the sky have more dew on them than the parts that can only "see" the tree, which may not have any dew on them at all. The car emits thermal radiation, and the tree absorbs/reflects some of that radiation back where the sky does not. The result is the exposed portions of the car can more easily shed the thermal energy and thus collect more dew.

95% Humidity areas away from civilization also have dense forests which trap the heat overnight.

[citation needed] - Gonna have to see where you're getting these numbers.
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A better analogy would be trying to make a transparent blanket warmer by adding tiny black specs to it. The CO2 causes warming because it absorbs infrared radiation that would otherwise escape into space.

You can easily demonstrate CO2's heat-absorbing effects using a fish tank (or similar chamber with transparent walls), bottle of compressed CO2 and a heat lamp. It's the kind of experiment middle school students do.

The problem with this idea is there is a fundamental limit to how much water vapor the atmosphere can "hold," but there is no such limit on the portion of CO2.

Water vapor - which traps heat in the same way CO2 does - does not trap the same wavelengths of infrared radiation, meaning they are two largely independent effects that can be estimated separately.

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I hit up HumbleBundle first before buying something through Steam to see if it's available DRM-free. The prices are typically the same and both have their own sales cycles, too.

Also charity and pay-what-you-want bundles, which is nice.
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Pixel art has a lot going for it, and it's not really "artsy fartsy."

"Artsy fartsy" is when too much emphasis is placed on the styling rather than substance. See "Oni and the Blind Forest" as a recent example: HD graphics, very pretty, story is pretentious as fuck. The pretty graphics are really the only thing that game has going for it.

That doesn't mean HD graphics are artsy either, I'm just saying that art style is not the only measure of pretentiousness.

On the other hand, pixel art games have a more minimalist feel to them and so often (not always) rely more on content and gameplay. You're not constantly distracted by fancy lighting, particle effects and polygon count, and you become absorbed by what's actually happening. Action takes priority over presentation. I'm playing a game for the action - if I want fancy visuals I'll watch a movie instead. I don't think it's a coincidence that many AAA titles seem to be more cutscene than gameplay, with pretty minimal player involvement, because they're basically movies that require the audience to press some buttons every now and again to make sure they're still awake - don't you dare get up for a snack during my long unskippable cutscene! (How pretentious is that?)

I also like pixel art because it leaves something to the imagination. Well done sprites may have low "resolution" but still have exquisite detail.

Lastly, I feel pixel art has a more "hand made" feel to it. Someone has to sit down and fiddle with each individual pixel to craft those sprites. There's no photoshop tool that will do an adequate job. You can't use blur or smudge or the heal tool to cover your mistakes and you often have a very small area in which to make something easily recognizable because you can't scale the sprites arbitrarily. It takes skill and time, and good pixel art is a sign that someone put a lot of effort into the project and actually gave a shit.
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