Also, the only realistic way to create a true "unintended acceleration" without pedal misapplication is something getting stuck in the pedal or the pedal getting stuck down, which is not actually a subtle thing (again, these things have happened, but they're dwarfed by how often people hit the wrong pedal). Just sensor readings alone don't cut it. As a general rule, pedals have multiple sensors reading the pedal position (typically 2-3). They have to agree with each other, or the target acceleration is set to zero. A sensor failure doesn't cut it. Also, Hall-effect sensors are highly reliable.

Oh, and there's one more "failure mechanism" which should be mentioned, which is: creep. Some EVs are set to creep or have creep modes, to mimic how an ICE vehicle creeps forward when one lifts their foot off the brakes. If someone forgets they have this on, it can lead to "unintended acceleration" reports. There have been cases where for example the driver gets in an accident, but not intense enough to trigger the accident sensors, and the car keeps "trying to drive" after the accident (aka, creep is engaged). People really should not engage creep mode, IMHO - the fact that ICEs creep forward is a bug, not a feature.

All the person in these "runaways" had to do was lift their foot off the accelerator. Or even leave their foot on the accelerator and just press the brakes, as the brakes can overpower the motor (think of how fast you accelerate when you slam on the pedal at highway speeds vs. how fast you slow down when you slam on the brakes).

Regulatory agencies the world over are constantly getting reports of "runaway unintended acceleration". Nearly every time they investigate, the person mixed up the pedal and the brake. When the car starts accelerating, in their panic they push said "brake" (actually the pedal) harder, and keep pushing it to the floor trying to stop the car. In their panic, people almost never reevaluate whether they're actually pushing the right pedal. It's particularly common among the elderly and the inebriated, and represents 16 thousand crashes per year in the US alone.

If your car starts accelerating when you're "braking", get out of your panic, lift your foot up, then make sure you *actually* put it on the brake, and you'll be fine.

This is the first time I've ever heard Eiríkr "The Red" (TH)orvaldsson referred to as "a shipping marketer" ;)

1) 1850-1900 is not "The Little Ice Age"
2) The Little Ice Age was not global, while you're talking about global climate reconstructions. The planet as a whole was not cold in the Little Ice Age.
3) You're talking about the basis of a particular climate target, not what the science is built on.
4) The mid 1800s is around when we started getting reasonably good regular quasi-global ground climate measurements, hence it's nice for establishing a target. That's why HADCRUT, which is based on historic measurements, starts in 1850. The first version of HADCRUT started in 1881 when the data was even better, but as more old data was recovered and digitized, it was extended to 1850. You can go further back, but you not only lose reading quality, but also are more confised to mainly regional records (Europe).
5) 1850-1900 was not a global cold period.

There's not some sort of conspiracy theory. The target is based on relative to when we have actual comparative data, and variations in modern preindustrial levels are a few tenths of a degree, not "several degrees" as per climate targets.

When they say "pre-industrial levels", when do you think they mean? The 19th century (even though the industrial revolution was well underway), usually 1890 specifically.

What year is used depends entirely on the study. Some start at the advent of satellite measurements, some at the advent of modern ground-based measurements, some with the era of semi-reliable ground-based measurements, some incorporate further back with more fragmentary measurements, and others use proxies - some recent proxies from 200, 300, 400 etc years ago, others thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds, millions of years ago or more. There is no single timeframe that is examined. Numerous studies evaluate each different source, and the different proxies are commonly plotted out relative to each other.

Suck/not-suck aside, would you at least agree that it's as good as The Mandalorian?

Eyeball monster == Baby Yoda. So. Fucking. Cute.

The second movie, Aliens, also didn't have the mood of the first movie, yet was still one of the best movies ever made (IMHO! of course). I don't think the feel of the original is necessary in sequels, and might even be so hard to recreate that it's borderline hubris to try.

I'll probably watch it .. when I feel like doing nothing and thinking the presence of the xenomorph is a coincidence.

I think that is the best attitude one can take. The "domestication" of the xeno is the weakest part of this TV series, but OTOH, the inclusion of all the new monsters is part of what makes A:E so fun. The classic xeno is just one monster among many, now.

There are so many horrible ways to die. Show us more of them, Noah! ;-)

The quantities of water and salt involved are not on human scales.

It's hard to overstate how bad it would be. Iceland doesn't just get glaciated in ice ages, it gets catastrophically glaciated. As in "mass kills almost all of our plant species". That's why there's currently no native conifers even though there used to be, for example - virtually the whole island ends up under an extremely thick sheet of ice.

Of course, a shorter localized ice age, in an otherwise warming world, isn't as bad as a Milankovitch Cycle ice age. But it'd be pretty awful for us. Right now, we're benefiting from a warming world (though losing our glaciers and regularly getting annoying new insect species which previously couldn't survive here :P). Our growing reason is so short, and the difference between our winter and summer temperatures so small, that even a small amount of warming drastically lengthens our growing season, and makes a vast difference to how well things can grow in it.

Palm trees kinda grow in Iceland ;) I had a windmill palm (in an area with geothermal-heated soil) last for like 4 years, though it slowly declined each winter. You can keep them alive by covering them with Christmas lights and then a blanket.

It does get overplayed though, with people acting like there was no reason to name Iceland "Ísland" and no reason to name Greenland "Grænland". There's plenty of ice here (much of the middle of the country doesn't melt until quite late in the year, and settlers approaching from the south and east sailed past the huge terminal glaciers of Vatnajökull), and the places that were settled in Greenland weren't all that different from e.g. Vestfir(th)ir. Grænland was chosen as a name to advertise it, but it's not like it was some sort of lie - most new settlements, even random villages wherever you are, are generally given pleasing names to try to attract people.

Also, Iceland got its name due to Flóki "Raven" Vilgerðarson, the viking-discoverer of Iceland (though the Irish already knew of Iceland). He had a clever trick to find islands, which was having ravens (land birds) on his boat; they'd fly up, look for land, and if they spotted it, beeline for it, but otherwise had no choice but to return to the boat. Ravens are quite large, black birds and thus easily visible to track from a boat. Anyway, his first winter at Bar(th)arströnd was abnormally cold, and there was sea ice visible offshore (something quite rare in Iceland), so he chose the name "Ísland".

It's "ís" (accented), and is pronounced "eece" :) "Eece-land" (land said like with a British accent, not an American one)

Fun fact: while ís does indeed mean "ice", it's not the colloquial word for ice - like, if you want ice at a restaurant, you ask for "klaki" (people sometimes jokingly refer to being in Iceland as "á klakanum" ("on the ice" ;) ). "Ís" these days is used as short for "rjómaís", lit. "cream-ice", aka ice cream - if you ask for "ís" at a restaurant, you'll get ice cream.

So in modern parliance, the country is "Ice Cream Land". ;) (Honestly, our ice cream is really good here - try the bilberry ice cream at Erpssta(th)ir for example :) )

Do you think it is interesting that the century during which an ice age was ending is the one used as a baseline for climate analysis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region.[2] It was not a true ice age of global extent.[3] "

Literally right at the top of the article.

Also, for the record, there is no single "baseline timeperiod for climate analysis".

No they're not. You're exaggerating. The majority of these developments are still empty. China's declining birth rates coupled with the increased mortality from COVID have thrown in a monkey wrench into their planning. Up to 80 million units are still empty, with slim prospects for ever being bought or even used as social housing. Most of them are just crumbling ruins at this point. Even where people have moved in (often with heavy government subsidies, essentially turning units into an eastern Section 8 housing project), occupancy is still under 10%. They simply built too many units, and there aren't enough people to live in them. Some developments are being reclaimed for agriculture, with farmers grazing livestock and plowing fields on the strips of land between crumbing concrete structures.

Nobody wants your shitty iOS. People tolerate it on phones, because you taught them that it's ok for PCs to suck if they fit in one hand. But once the one hand constraint is lifted, people come back to their senses for some weird reason. You did too good a job of persuading people to treat phones as weird exceptions to common sense, when you should have undermined common sense itself (but that would have harmed Mac sales).