Bet this is modded something like +4 Troll the next time I look.

Perspective is important. It's an extrapolated figure, based on trace-element factors for Cd, Cr, Mn, Ni, but not lead. That seems incredibly dishonest.

What's more, they report 0.86–1.70 ng/m ambient lead level... which upon brief examination, is about 1/4th the average urban ambient lead level, and from what I'm able to determine, about 20% of the EPA 2022–2024 non-source Pb-TSP daily mean. In other words, it's significantly lower than sources with known lead. (Similarly, it's about ~20% of historic ambient national levels - couldn't find date later than 2019 for this.)

Looks like they played very Orwellian with their data interpretation. "The use of wood as an energy source is a relic of the past, one that should not be relived if given a choice." is... well. This is "let them eat cake" level hubris. Whoever said this either has a disdain for the people they're's studying, or have zero economic understanding.... and based on the actual study findings, I can't say it appears to be truthful, either.

The people who burn wood are not doing it out of personal preference. They're doing because they can afford it: they have no other choice. Chopping, splitting, drying, and burning wood is a labor intensive activity. It's done out of fiscal/economic necessity: fuel prices for heating are extremely high, and in the area they sampled, they rely primarily on heating oil (basically: diesel fuel). Even last winter, the average household heating cost was about $1800/month, about twice what it was in 2015. With fuel prices surging? You can effectively expect twice that cost (or more) this coming winter due to the conflict with Iran.

Musing: Were the lead actually higher in the area (from what I can tell, it's not), I wonder if the "high" lead in the air would be representative of "carbon sequestration" of the trees over the past 70 odd years: as they grew, they absorbed the lead in the air?

What are you, a commiebot? You're spamming multiple threads with this nonsense.

Why don't you just propose burning the corporate facilities and the farms of people who don't eagerly comply, too?

The result is the same.

Sure, if you're building them to 1970s common practice.

A modern DC uses as much water as a Super Walmart, and a modern nuclear facility is passively cooled and recycles its water (as in, uses it repeatedly).

That's a symptom of economies of scale, and excessive de-industrializing regulation. Nuke plants have been a one-off, unique design with little reproduced between them. When they have been built in recent memory, it's been with 1950s technology.

If we instead institutionally embraced newer (safer, cheaper) reactor designs and built them at scale (with industrialized QA), we'd have safe, clean nuclear power for 200 years+ in the US, just using the existing nuclear waste.

There are enough public instances of people losing their Google account due to Google's policy and automation that this is likely a very bad idea.

I've got less than a year of email locally in Thunderbird for one mail account and it tops 10GB.

I think you underestimate the amount of space files can take: attached files take up a lot. What do I do with that email, delete it? That's not a workable solution if I want to retain the metadata associated with the files (which I do).

Ok, I'm imagining a class of high school students breaking the guardrails, getting it to report that they're doing brilliantly and deserve A+ while they watch tiktok... at the very least they'll make it say racist things and publish that on tiktok for the lulz. It'll also find a way to organically mention how much its been hearing that everyone else really likes new Pepsi Cherry Zero on a daily basis too.

Is that not the outcome you were imagining too?

Oooh... yes please, i can't wait for virtual Feyman prefacing his lectures with the lords prayer, explaining how God created the universe and all the physics in it; and also: you look thirsty, there is a Pepsi machine with new Pepsi Cherry Zero in the hallway; have you tried it?

Einstein meanwhile extols the virtue of Zionist colonization in Palestine...

Wait? Do you actually think that it would go differently? If we create puppets of brilliant revered thinkers they'll inevitably say whatever slop some combination of political appointees and advertising companies want them to say. Why on earth would anyone think they would be used for anything else?

That's not an apt comparison, since bikes don't have an auto shifter. They don't even have a dry clutch like cars do - they have a wet clutch, which enables you to do things like ease or slam in and out of a gear while accelerating or deaccelerating, which is like 50% of the riding experience: it allows for launch, wheelies, better corner control, wheel-on-pavement control, and so on, depending on what you're trying to do.

Same reason why driving a shitbox honda civic with a manual is many times more fun than driving a newer vehicle with more HP and better handling, which is a smooth auto. It actually takes skill to do well, and that makes it fun.

And, to play devil's advocate, most cars nowadays also have the ability to pick a specific auto-clutched gear with the auto gearbox: you can go from first, to 2nd, or if you want, accelerate into 2nd from third and back to third for a bit of a launch. Not only is this more fun, it's extremely useful for controlling the vehicle on winding hill grades and bad weather driving: you use the gear ratio and the rolling resistance (while improving fuel economy) instead of the brakes on the downside of the hill - similar energetic effect as "reactive charging brakes", but less likely to send you to the ditch on an icy road.

Now if it could help me find the flash drive with $125 in 2012 bitcoin that sat on my truck's dashboard for a couple years before I lost it, that'd be great.

Its frequently used on general elective courses because they're big enough (often hundreds of students) that the statistical variation between student cohorts fits normal curves pretty well.

That doesn't even make sense. The defining characteristic of a credential mill is that it passes everyone who goes. A curve grading system assigns Fs and Ds and C- to the bottom of every class.

Meanwhile, at Harvard, right now, everyone who goes and shows up to class passes, and half of them get As. How is that not "essentially a credential mill" right now?

Even more damning, a generation ago 25% of them got As. What's your theory on that? Harvard students this generation are just a lot smarter and more studious and they're mastering the material at a much higher rate? Or that Harvard is handing As out like participation trophies now?

I know where my money is at. And Harvard's own teaching staff agrees.

Your splitting hairs. The OP complained that having your grade affected by the grades of your peers was wrong. Then you said, well it would be fine if they based the grades on the "top score" which is still having your grade determined by what (one of) your peers did.

If your 40% on the exam would be an A if the brightest kid got a 44% but would be a B+ if the brightest kid got a 48%, I doubt the OP would be any "happier" with that situation.

"AI won't know" ? it doesn't know.... "it" is an over-glorified spell checker, a used-up husk of a locust floating on the surface of a pond in a stiff breeze, pinging from reed to reed and reversing direction to the perturbations of airflow thereof; and you would ascribe that to be a conscious living organism but it's just a bunch of shit in a pond for the benefit of no one.