So, when we say microplastics, we really mainly mean nanoplastics - the stuff made from, say, drinking hot liquids from low-melting-point plastic containers. And yeah, they very much look like a problem. The strongest evidence is for cardiovascular disease. The 2024 NEJM study for example found that for patients with above-threshold levels of nanoplastics in cartoid artery plaque were 4,5x more likely to suffer from a heart attack. Neurologically, they cross the brain-blood barrier (and quite quickly). A 2023 study found that they cause alpha-synuclein to misfold and clump together, a halmark of Parkinsons and various kinds of dementia. broadly, they're associated with oxidative stress, neuroinflammation, protein aggregation, and neurotransmitter alterations. Oxidative stress is due to cells struggling to break down nanoplastics in them. They're also associated with immunotoxicity, inflammatory bowel disease, and reproductive dysfunction, including elevating inflammatory markers, impairing sperm quality, and modulating the tumor microenvironment. With respect to reproduction, they're also associated with epigenetic dysregulation, which can lead to heritable changes.

And here's one of the things that get me - and let me briefly switch to a different topic before looping back. All over, there's a rush to ban polycarbonate due to concerns over a degradation product (bisphenol-A), because it's (very weakly) estrogenic. But typical effective estrogenic activity from typical levels of bisphenol-A are orders of magnitude lower than that of phytoestrogens in food and supplements; bisphenol-A is just too rare to exert much impact. Phytoestrogens have way better PR than bisphenol-A, and people spend money buying products specifically to consume more of them. Some arguments against bisphenol-A focus on what type of estrogenic activity it can promote (more proliferative activity), but that falls apart given that different phytoestrogens span the whole gamut of types of activation. Earlier research arguing for an association with estrogen-linked cancer seems to have fallen apart in more recent studies. It does seem associated with PCOS, but it's hard to describe it as a causal association, because PCOS is associated with all sorts of things, including diet (which could change the exposure rate vs. non-PCOS populations) and significant hormonal changes (which could change the clearance rate of bisphenol-A vs. non-PCOS populations). In short, bisphenol-A from polycarbonate is not without concern, but the concern level seems like it should be much lower than with nanoplastics.

Why bring this up? Because polycarbonate is a low-nanoplastic-emitting material. It is a quite resilient, heat tolerant plastic, and thus - being much further from its glass transition temperature - is not particularly prone to shedding nanoplastics. By contrast, its replacements - polyethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthate, etc - are highly associated with nanoplastic release, particularly with hot liquids. So by banning polycarbonate, we increase our exposure to nanoplastics, which are much better associated with actual harms. And unlike bisphenol-A, which is rapidly eliminated from the body, nanoplastics persist. You can't get rid of them. If some big harm is discovered with bisphenol-A that suddenly makes the risk picture seem much bigger than with nanoplastics, we can then just stop using it, and any further harm is gone. But we can't do that with nanoplastics.

People seriously need to think more about substitution risks when banning products. The EU in particular is bad about not considering it. Like, banning neonicotinoids and causing their replacement by organophosphates, etc isn't exactly some giant win. Whether it's a benefit to pollinators at all is very much up in the air, while it's almost certain that the substitution is more harmful for mammals such as ourselves (neonicotinoids have very low mammalian toxicity, unlike e.g. organophosphates, which are closely related to nerve agents).

It is popular throughout the world with many millions of installs. Half the country (USA) has legislation allowing balcony either already on the books or in process.

With a unidirectional meter you can have counting of reverse flow be blocked or count as an absolute value of flow against you. I don't know the details about models and reasons for it yet I know people with these meters have been charged for unintentional export because they for example had the CT installed backwards.

The article says nothing about creating fusion. The announcement was first plasma not fusion.

The issue with the meters is some don't have the ability to measure direction of flow. If you install a balcony solar system and it produces more energy than you are using at the time the energy you are putting back into the grid is counted as energy consumed and you end up being billed for it.

A workaround is some balcony kits have CTs you place around the main conductors feeding your panel. The solar inverter will use the CT to ensure no excess energy is exported.

All micro inverter kits have working anti-islanding as a standard feature. Normal PV systems work the same way. This isn't a function of the meter and isn't optional. The grid communicates with grid tied inverters directly by monitoring AC frequency. In certain areas like CA and HI there are specific frequency thresholds used to kick the grid tied inverters offline.

Which is more believable? Simulating real life in a holodeck or the Goddess of Empathy?

Sand reflects about 70% of solar energy, solar panels reflect about 10% plus another 20% in harvested energy which still leaves you with twice the amount of absorbed energy vs sand.

Greening occurs due to reduced surface temperatures / evaporation due to panel shading.

Screwing panels into place once you've poured all the concrete, installed ground mounts, run all the wiring and electrical boxes is like getting to the 10 yard line and only then breaking out the automation.

On one hand the court argued obscenity for minors is a valid basis for denying 1st amendment protections. On the other hand it struct down the same restrictions decades ago in the CDA due to..drumroll... 1st amendment protections. The court just does whatever the hell it wants no different than the recent pulling of absolute presidential immunity out of thin air.

Now where have I seen the diagram on pg9 before?

"The '193 Patent employs the unconventional solution of providing a flag that indicates both merging and skip mode are to be used. This allows for more efficient coding of merge and skip information"

"For example, the encoder can now indicate that a block is being merged and uses skip mode by using a single flag."

Which flag enables ethical behavior within the legal profession?

"Wavefront parallel processing" allowed parallel processing of rows of chunks in "wavefront" style, where each row could be decoded by a separate processor, and decoding of a given chunk in a given row could proceed once the processing of the row above had proceeded to the chunk immediately above and to the right of"

Had to check the date of the patent to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. Well yea it does say "Mar. 14, 2017".

"The '272 Patent employs the unconventional solution of partitioning: using one type of coding to encode smaller values, and if that coding indicates that the value is larger than a threshold, another type of coding is used to indicate how much larger the value is"

There is no other explanation... I am losing my mind.

I'm getting the distinct impression many of these fusion startups are scams. Term igniting plasma in the context of fusion reactors means you have started fusion. All they did here was create plasma.

The business model is just an endless rope-a-dope of milestones that lead nowhere. Even Trump has a fusion startup (e.g. TAE)

You misread or misunderstood the statement. Nothing was said or had anything to do with those who didn't vote.

Yes, I think an effectively dead leader that isn't being replaced is better than a living one presuming the goal is regime change.

I keep having flashbacks to Sharpiegate. My personal guess Trump is mostly just making shit up. His public statements had the same vibe as the babbling about Iran having Tomahawks.

The "point at hand" of my post was exclusively a response to the absurd characterization "because of the poor downtrodden Iranians".

I don't think #1 makes all that much sense given ample opportunity to bomb North Korea when it didn't possess nukes.

I don't pretend to have any idea why we are or are not bombing any given country. I never supported bombing Iran but I do support continuing it for the sake of regime change now that the bombing has started. I would say compared to North Korea Iran is different in a couple of relevant respects.

1. Iran is the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism. North Korea except for a criminal enterprise to make money for the regime mostly keeps to itself.

2. Iranian regime is largely seen as illegitimate by the vast majority of its population. North Koreans are so brainwashed it isn't clear to me that is even the case.

I have no way of knowing what was part of any equation. I do know there was global outrage over many tens of thousands of protestors being murdered by the regime over the course of two days. I also know Trump made threats against the regime over murdering citizens and stated "HELP IS ON ITS WAY". It was shortly after this that US military assets in fact started heading in the direction of Iran. The Israelis seem to at least rhetorically be concerned with protecting Iranians taking out check points, regime members responsible for mass murders and conducting overwatch missions around recent Persian new years holiday celebrations.

I have always assumed regime change at least the kind that would lead to RP's prosperity project is less likely than not to be successful. The best measure that tries to be objective I've been able to find is this.

https://iran.aminsabeti.com/en

RP, BB, DJT, CENTCOM...etc have all repeatedly asked Iranians not go out and protest due to danger from regime and bombs actively dropping. There will be a time for it. That time is NOT now. People are still protesting from their homes at night and IRGC goons are still shooting up apartment buildings trying to suppress people shouting anti-regime slogans from their windows and balconies.

I have never in my life argued for attacking Iran or North Korea or any other country. Now that we are attacking Iran any goal short of regime change is in my view counterproductive.

The guy "leading the country" is likely either a vegetable or outright dead.

People don't seem to have any clue of the extent of the oppression in Iran nor are they aware of the extent to which legitimacy has been irrevocably shattered. Saying shit like "because of the poor downtrodden Iranians" is a manifestly ignorant assessment of the situation.