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Comment Re:He will, indeed, take that to his grave (Score 1) 257

I think you were fortunate enough to find work that you love. If you continue to love doing it, great. The Venn diagram of fulfilling activities and income producing activities doesn't so neatly intersect for everyone. The big lie here is that only income-producing work provides people meaning. Being a volunteer historian or nature guide, amateur radio enthusiasts, mentorship programs - all of these things involve effort and striving, they just may not be highly remunerative.

No one is saying that anyone should have *your* job for fewer hours than you're willing to put in. You do it, you're productive, great! I don't resent that you are the type of person you are, but we could not have a world made entirely of people like you. At the end of the day, someone needs to be a custodian, or a dockworker, or any other number of jobs that aren't necessarily in the service of moving up the rungs in some career ladder, and if those jobs don't fulfill them they'd like some time to have fulfilling projects or activities as well.

Comment Re: Just about to get in the car and return to off (Score 3, Insightful) 147

Not sure if you're serious but fine:

1. Sure, some countries produce largely from coal. The US and many first world countries don't, so the relative impact is greater here. That's not negated by it being a lateral move in another country.
2. Upgrading a centralized energy source from a carbon intensive production process to a carbon free source is more straightforward to accomplish than millions of independent small sources. Sure, they all use one power grid, but now I only have to to upgrade that power grid.

The real solution is for the carbon lite option to be the cheapest option, but in many cases that doesn't become true until economies of scale are in place.

Comment Re:Accurate, but incomplete (Score 2) 81

I'm legitimately curious, what data are you looking at to come to that conclusion. If I look up the Dust Bowl heat wave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave), then I find this information:

Summer 1936 remained the warmest summer on record in the USA since official records began in 1895, until 2021.[33] February 1936 was the coldest February on record, and 5 of the 12 months were below average, leaving the full year 1936 at just above the average.

This doesn't seem to support your point. 2023 handily beat 2021.

Are you comparing using a different measure?

Moreover, the surface air temperature curves in the Ars Technica article go back to 1940. Right at the top of the article: https://arstechnica.com/scienc...

I'm obviously not omniscient, but is there data showing that the Dust Bowl heat wave is still a record?

Comment Re:Are they really that stupid? (Score 1) 47

McKinsey (and high end management consulting) works a bit differently that most companies. The top of the McKinsey pyramid is for dyed-in-the-wool consultants that are mainly responsible for bringing in the big clients and broad thought leadership. The lower level managers and consultants doing the actual day to day work, such as it is, are intentionally high turnover jobs. I think something like 50% of people are gone after two years, and like 90% after 5 years. It is built on intensive work for high pay and incentivizing the ones who really take to client management with gobs of money.

They effectively want turnover anyway. Placing ex-McKinsey-ites in key locations in industry expands their deal flow in the future, as the alumni network will funnel more business back to them. If they need more bodies, McKinsey has the cachet to farm a new crop of Harvard / Yale / etc. undergraduates and Ph.D.s for the (admittedly well paid) management consulting meat grinder whenever they need it again.

In leaner times, they seem to be just helping the process along a bit.

Comment Re:Ironic (Score 4, Insightful) 134

Efforts to curb climate "crisis" ends up adding to it. Seems as myopic with the cure as the cause.

The fuel regulation was an effort to improve air quality, not fight climate change.

Further, I'm not really getting your angle here. Given your scare quotes around "crisis", I'd guess you either think climate change isn't real, isn't caused by humans, or doesn't matter either way.

If it's either of the first two, why would you not accept evidence of anthropogenic climate change, but then accept the findings of this paper, which indicate that, actually, human emissions from tanker ships affect the climate.

If you think climate change doesn't matter, then I'd think you'd be equally unmoved by the fact that the pollution reduction increases warming.

Comment Re:Does this solve a problem? (Score 1) 18

This is an improvement for most people... just not for you because [reasons].

You are not the target market. Most people is the target market.

...which I acknowledged in my first sentence. I was specifically curious if there's a general security benefit for all users that I'm overlooking. I suppose not.

Comment Does this solve a problem? (Score 3, Interesting) 18

I understand that this will likely bring the general level of password management up for most people, but I struggle to see why an already conscientious user would want this.

I already use a password manager with strong passwords for most sites and applications. What happens if I die? What happens if the fingerprint reader dies at an inopportune moment? Right now I can just share the password with my family or put it in a safe deposit box. And sure, I can set up *their* fingerprints as well, but this all seems like a lot more steps to achieve about the same security I have now.

Comment Re:It's like Pidgin Chat (Score 1, Troll) 54

Why have all AlM, ICQ, and MSN installed when you can just use Pidgin?
https://www.pidgin.im/

Very revolutionary stuff going on here.

AIM? ICQ? Did you hop out of a portal from 20 years ago?

I suspect you are being facetious, though, in which case I will at least acknowledge I appreciate the joke! Trillian did that once upon a time as well.

Comment Re:"would likely disappear in the next five years" (Score 1) 56

These shallow no-outlet lakes do that. Shrink and shrink down to nothing, then grow back, rinse and repeat.

Ultimately there's a different point to raising the alarm here, though. Static, dynamic, etc. I don't really care. Let's assume it's entirely natural for the Great Salt Lake to dry up on long time scales. The consequences would still be pretty bad from an air pollution and health perspective for the very *un*natural city on its shores given the waste heavy metals on the lakebed.

Worth saying again, it literally doesn't matter if the lake is currently drying up because of climate change, water usage, regular changes, or the will of God - it's currently headed towards 0, and if Utah doesn't want to deal with the consequences of a dry Great Salt Lake, then it needs to do something about it.

Arguing about the "why" of it so that one can dismiss warnings (at least the original poster) is counterproductive.

Comment Re:"would likely disappear in the next five years" (Score 4, Informative) 56

Given that this is generally attributed less to climate change than to the rapid growth of Salt Lake City and the lack of a rational pricing structure or limits around water usage, that example is less relevant.

I'm not even really sure where your apparent skepticism comes from. Aerial photos of the lake over the past 40 years paint a pretty clear picture and trendline that doesn't really leave much room for debate. I suppose you could argue that humans will "find a way". However, part of finding a way through is general awareness of the consequences of continuing business as usual.

Comment Re:4 Longer days ... (Score 1) 199

You end up working the same hours, just spread over 4 longer days, rather than 5 shorter ones
and they tend to shift which day people are not available so they still have staff available all days

You say that like it's a bad thing. A lot of these companies do actually lessen the stated hours, but I'd take that trade regardless. I suspect a lot of people would.

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