Regarding the "hockey stick" graph. (Taking absolutely no position on whether Mann was honest or not, competent or not, etc.)

I was under the impression that the Hockey Stick graph had been shown to be defective as an indicator of warming, primarily because it took tree ring data as one of its proxies for temperature, but carbon dioxide concentration increases alone have been shown to substantially promote tree growth even in the absence of temperature increases. So how much of the sudden rise in the graph is from temperature increase (if any) and how much just from increased CO2 levels is unknown.

But I don't have any links to reliable scholarly articles examining this issue. Do any of you?

In the U.S. regulation is often driven by existing industries buying politicians to raise the barriers to entry and box out competition. In the E.U. regulation is driven by trying to protect and benefit citizens, probably to an excessive degree.

No one is getting it totally right, but at least the government of the EU is attempting to serve the people it's supposed to be serving - citizens. I'm not inclined to lean towards more regulations but given the choice between the two? I'll take a government that serves citizens over corporations.

I appreciate the need to increase confidence in our election systems after the 2020 debacle, but, "confident that voting systems and other election infrastructure are well-defended"? What in the entire history of electronic voting machines would lead someone to say something like that?

I've spent a lot of time discussing things online since the dial up BBS days. The biggest change I have observed as the unwashed masses have gotten involved in the discussion is the unwillingness to learn anything new or see nuance within issues. The foundation of social media is the little dopamine hit people get from being right, or performing outrage, and that's really all most people are after.

There is no question I can be wordy, but I had someone tell me I "wrote a book" after I posted three short sentences in response to an article.

I've seen people post charts that demonstrate something is happening as evidence that it isn't happening.

If reputable sites and cross checking won't give them the answer they are looking for, a single reference from a *.wordpress.com site will do even if it is demonstrably incorrect.

None of the big issues we face today are simple. They require nuanced solutions that take in to account many complex factors and borrow from multiple political ideologies. That doesn't give people the dopamine hit they want, though, and it doesn't serve the interests of the political class.

Large nonprofit hospital systems also sink money into real estate, especially in the form of buying more hospitals. This has a double benefit because as they gain control of more facilities in the region, the more they can strong arm payers into higher fees.

"changing perceptions" through marketing? that sounds like an arms race with the other side. Long time ago we thought the right way to change perceptions was through good education and development of critical thinking skills.

Where did it all go wrong :)

It all went wrong when each sides of the discussion concluded that scientific papers supporting the other side were marketing fake-news, trying to gaslight them into supporting a scam to let the opposing side acquire money and/or power, rather than actual science.

Warmists think evidence against any aspect of their side's story is akin to smoking research sponsored by tobacco companies. Skeptics think any evidence for a global warming story has been corrupted, ala early drug war research on psychedelic drugs, to feed government power grabs and attempts to put rent-seeking taxes on commerce (e.g. Gore's carbon-credit exchange).

Now neither side believes academic papers on the subject. We'll just have to wait and see what the climate does.

Following this paper's prescription, of course, would just put the nail in the coffin on any remaining hope of convincing the population to pay attention to the sort of propaganda it prescribes. (Assuming the very existence of the paper hasn't already done that.)

Flight time is about 20 years. (Proxima is about 4 light years away and the swarm is averaging about 1/5th lightspeed.) I suspect even some of us boomers can hang in here that long - even if life-extension treatments don't become available.

Oops. Maybe not. They're talking about 75 years before getting around to a launch.

I'll be surprised if the project stays funded, since even without delays everyone funding it will die before there's any payoff.

Flight time is about 20 years. (Proxima is about 4 light years away and the swarm is averaging about 1/5th lightspeed.) I suspect even some of us boomers can hang in here that long - even if life-extension treatments don't become available.

Also, I wonder what it will cost to fund the laser for half a century.

The launch and acceleration of the whole swarm is over in about a year. Individual elements are up to speed in much less than that.

(You HAVE to do it fast: Once they're moving they're out of range darned quick, so you have to get them to cruising speed before you can't hit them any more. Fortunately the little motes are really sturdy so you can give them a BIG big push.)

Read The Paper.

You cannot aim sufficient energy over distances like that
[description of betavoltaic battery run off "interstellar wind" of high-speed travel]

Oh, yes...

You CAN aim the propulsion energy well enough for long enough to get them up to 20%ish of lightspeed. After that the energy is stored in their momentum relative to that of the interstellar gas. You don't have to keep powering them from home and there's far more than you need to power them for the rest of the mission.

(I happen to know one of the people involved.)

You cannot aim sufficient energy over distances like that

They were originally intended to be powered by betavoltaic batteries (solar cell sandwich with a charged particle emitter for the peanut butter - like the "radioactive diamond" batteries but with Strontium 90 for the radiation source). But another dude computed what local interstellar hydrogen looked like when treated as a proton/electron beam at 20% of light speed and concluded no other radiation source would be necessary - by a long shot. Just launch with the supercaps charged and you're up to power-generation speed long before they're discharged. You only harvest a fraction of that energy - the "solar cells" are far to thin to stop many of the protons but they make lots of electron-hole pairs on the way through - and you use heavy atoms (much charge per atom) in their semiconductor structure to maximize that. That gives you plenty of power to run the computer, sensors, and attitude control. Also the transmitters to phone home, with several watts total over the surviving portion of the swarm.

and you can't slow these gram-weight "robots" down with this propulsion system.

Sure you can. That not-quite-relativistic hydrogen wind through the radiation battery gives you enough friction, when combined with attitude adjustments, to bring the swarm into proper formation and all traveling at the same speed by the time it reaches the target. (You launch it over a considerable period, with the later ones faster than the earlier ones so they all arrive at the same time.) It's slowed a bit by encounter time, but not by very much. So it has to look fast as it flies by.

Maintenance on EVs may be cheaper at first, but they are way more expensive in the long term.

After 100k miles (or whenever the warranty ends), you will eventually need to replace the vehicle's batteries. And that will cost $10-20k.

Great, maybe, if you lease. Terrible for anyone owning for the long term.

The web was supposed to democratize publishing and introduce a meritocracy of ideas.

The problem, it turns out, is that most people are really, really, REALLY fucking stupid and will believe absolutely anything that jives with their own personal prejudices. The people casting the votes in this democracy of publishing are morons.

Timestamp doesn't match if the signing is done by remote server, which at least some of these services have been doing.

A camera that has to be connected to the internet and a remote timeserver/signature generator to record and sign a picture? JUST what I DON'T want to press "take picture" on in a war zone.

Can't you just imagine an automatic "hear the camara talk to the net, identify its location, and hand that to the weapons aiming system" device, and how deploying that would affect war reporting?

What's the solution for storage outside of pressure vessels or cryogenics?

Metal Hydrates (e.g. 1:3 palladium/silver alloy).