The world has gone insane!!! Why would anyone threaten or rationally consider using nuclear weapons against any country all over the political leanings and chest thumping of the leadership of some other country?! It's insanity.

Because threatening a nuclear war raises the cost of the war.

Take Ukraine currently. Russia's slowly nibbling away at its territory. If Ukraine was a nuclear power, it could very well raise that as a deterrent and perhaps Russia would decide the increased cost of destabilizing Ukraine wasn't worth it. On the other hand, Russia is a nuclear power, which raises the cost to anyone who wants to interfere with Russia's expansion.

Is it ideal? No. But a nuclear threat does give a nation bargaining power.

Another example would be Pakistan/India. Both nuclear powers, both with a history of pointless border conflict (they hold the record for the highest battleground - they've actual fought over a mountain glacier that was so inhospitable that only a tiny fraction of the casualties were due to combat and not the environment). Being nuclear powers, even the pointless border wars have a strong incentive not to spiral out of control, because if vast amounts of territory were lost, the nuclear option would be considered.

Is this insane? To a degree, yes. Has it worked so far? To a degree, yes. Hopefully someone doesn't screw things up.

Who cares if Uber _is_ a cab company? What moral authority does the state have to stop consenting adults from forming their own contracts and doing business with each other?

As an adult and a cyclist, I would prefer that any vehicle that hits me have the insurance to cover my injuries. Since Uber only has 50k/individual/accident if the driver is between trips, and since Uber has denied liability in similar circumstances, I consider them a risk.

The dam failures that you linked to were primarily caused by a typhoon that dumped over a meter of water in the area in less than 24 hours. It was pretty clearly a natural disaster that they weren't prepared for.

If a nuclear plant failed due to a natural event that caused a massive amount of water to accumulate in one area, people would be calling for all nuclear plants of every design to be dismantled, and would be saying that nuclear is unsafe.

I'm pointing out the hypocrisy. Banqaio was a massive disaster, killing an estimated 171,000 people, and making millions homeless. Yet we don't see calls to dismantle all dams, or that dams are inherently unsafe.

I suppose, now that I think about it, they might even be able to eventually grow you a new heart while your body ran on an artificial heart for a bit.

Would you need an artificial heart? Could it be possible to grow another heart somewhere else in the body?

As the new organ matures, then it could be transplanted to replace the existing one.

Speaking of the idea that we haven't evolved for the modern diet, what about modern exercise, or lack thereof? It's only been in the past few generations that a large percentage of the population have had a mostly inactive lifestyle. We sure didn't evolve under these conditions.

Yes, but people still seem to drive like idiots the first time it snows each fall.

Email's strength is that it is asynchronous.

That's the theory. In practice, people seem to treat it like instant messaging.

In Minnesota? Insulated garage doors is $10 of styrofoam. And I've seen lots of detached garages, in warmer climes. But in the cold areas, people don't like to have to run outside to get something from the garage. Everyone would insulate the garage walls as if it were a house wall, and the door would be insulated with PS foam at a minimum.

Currently in Minnesota. My house has a detached garage, and the garage door is not insulated.

Walking around my neighborhood, detached garages are the norm. Most appear to be uninsulated.

911 calls are by nature a conversation, a two-way exchange of details from the caller and suggestions from the operator as the situation unfolds. That will (likely) be lost in a text exchange - what parent will keep texting 'she's not breathing, she's turning blue' to 911 when they are standing by their choking child?

On the other hand, a bystander may be more likely to text than call 911, especially if it's a situation where they don't want their actions known.

I had a lien against my state tax return briefly. It concerned a few grand.

Luckily, I wasn't living in the state at the time, and I could show that I paid the bill off years before. It got worked out rather quickly.

But if they couldn't find me, I'd have had that "debt" for the next several years (until the seven year rule kicked in) completely unaware of it.

"important things" like walking three miles to and from work and the grocery store instead of spending time on the lake fishing and developing a deeper friendship with my fishing partners?

Or, of course, you could just use this amazing, cheap invention called a bicycle and do the route in an easy 15 minutes.

If you did it twice a day, to and from work, that would be 30 minutes of exercise. Depending on the traffic, it could take very little additional time for your commute.

And since driving a car tends to be a lot more expensive per mile than most people realize, you'd save a decent chunk of change.

Accounted for that.

Do you understand how this works?

18 * 400 = 7,200 reactor-years per accident.

Not too far away from the 10,000 figure.

Elon Musk is, in the eyes of Energia, a reckless cowboy calling for accidents to happen.

Elon Musk, in the eyes of Energia, is a competitor.

So because it's "more expensive in pretty much every other country." One should follow that example to screw "everyone else over." As a point it's $1.42/L($5.32/Gal) Canadian where I am right now, and businesses are already jacking up the prices on everything else.

Where I'm at, it's about US$3.50/Gallon. About $0.50 of that is tax. Also, in my area, that tax (and other taxes and user fees specific to automobile drivers) pay for about a quarter of the cost of roads. The rest is subsidized from non-transportation taxes & fees.

As you can see, if the gasoline tax was increased to cover the full share of the cost of roads, it would make the final cost of gas about $5.00/gallon. That is without figuring out any externalities - such as the 34,000 deaths directly caused each year by automobiles in my country. Or the additional estimated 53,000 early deaths caused by transportation pollution. And that pesky cost of military involvement to reduce oil supply disruptions - while most of our oil comes from Canada, oil is a fungible good, which means any major disruption worldwide will cause gas price shocks.

So while you may think $5.32/gallon is screwing automobile drivers over, I suspect it's too cheap to cover even most of the cost of oil.

There are websites like "myfitnesspal.com" that do the same thing - integrate with various devices, such as Fitbit trackers, Strava, etc.

Rather useful for some people, but also a little worrisome for privacy concerns.