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Comment Re:total batshit (Score 1) 127

It's also long past time to recognize that communism (even if you call it socialism) is suicidally stupid, but here we are.

Nobody appears to have been talking about communism besides you. If you'd like to read up more on how rent is theft, I suggest a little known book titled The Wealth of Nations:

[Landlords] are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind

Comment "The error doesn't affect our conclusion" (Score 3, Informative) 105

Except it absolutely does. The original conclusion was that using black plastic cooking utensils could potentially expose you to a nearly unsafe amount of BDE-209 and that this was a cause for concern. With the math error corrected though, it turns out black plastic cooking utensils don't even remotely expose you to unsafe amounts of BDE-209, and are thus in all likelihood as safe for use as any other utensil. Kudos to the authors for noticing and correcting the error, but they should have gone the distance and admitted that their error made the fundamental thesis of the paper incorrect.

Comment The Metaverse is also sinking though (Score 1) 99

Personally if I were running the show in Tuvala I'd take whatever money they're throwing down a pit in metaverse nonsense and use it instead to invest in some flood barriers. Or, if that's too infeasible, then just give it directly to your residents so they can use it to flee somewhere at a higher elevation.

Comment Holding climate talks in Dubai is laughable (Score 3, Insightful) 73

It's like holding a mass intervention run by and located in the favorite bar of all the alcoholics, and the bar owner spends the whole session sipping a martini and complaining that it's unfair to attack his sale of alcohol as the source of everybody's alcoholism. Has the bones of a decent sketch comedy bit I guess, but it's nowhere close to a serious attempt at solving a serious problem.

Comment What's the facility's total power draw? (Score 1) 206

Realistically, that should factor into the "tons of CO2" removed calculations. If it removes 1,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per day, but its power draw from the grid results in 500 additional tons of CO2 being released power plants, then the "true" amount of CO2 being sequestered is half what they're claiming. And this isn't even getting into if the power draw induces *more* in grid emissions than it actually captures from the air, at which point this thing is less climate change revolution and more absurdist parody.

Comment The "economic sense" is corporate real estate (Score 4, Insightful) 159

All these companies bought or built swanky towers for hundreds of millions - if not billions - in expensive trendy places like SF, NYC, Chicago, etc right before COVID, then had to send everybody home while they paid the electric and property taxes on empty buildings. Now they can bring everybody back, and the bean counters want to because it's the only way to justify their expenses. You can't just sell the things either, because who's spending that much money to buy an office right now that none of their workers will want to commute to? I'm sure the suits are also under enormous pressure from Wall Street too, since so many banks and investment firms have corporate real estate bound up in their portfolios.

Comment Thanks to the "Green" Party (Score 4, Informative) 188

Their irrational aversion to any form of nuclear power generation whatsoever has not only dumpstered Germany's climate goals by forcing them onto burning dirty lignite coal, but from a national security perspective utterly gutted Germany's energy independence and made them reliant on imports. The "plan" was to rely on Russian LNG while renewables amiable to the Greens like solar and wind were phased in, but then Ukraine happened and welp! Just utter incompetence.

Comment Translation: (Score 5, Insightful) 75

"We spent all that grant money on executive bonuses and stock dividends because we actually never had any intent of investing in rural network infrastructure, and now that those chickens have come home to roost we expect the government to look the other way and give us even more money we'll use to enrich ourselves at the expense of the taxpayer."

Comment Cultural expectations for Japanese women (Score 5, Insightful) 175

A fundamental disconnect exists for Japanese women that discourages having children for the ambitious, intelligent, and highly educated. Once a woman becomes pregnant in Japan she's expected to totally drop her career to focus on being a mother and housewife to support her child and partner. Of course some do return to work and on paper support structures like maternity leave exists, but generally they're pushed heavily to leave the workforce and can face being stigmatized for returning to work. A natural result of those cultural expectations paired with increasing higher education rates for women is that more will hold off or avoid entirely having children so they can continue their careers.

Comment Re:A low key RIF (Score 4, Insightful) 81

It's also a way to shed older, more expensive workers without being explicit policies of age discrimination. After all who's more likely to accept relocation: the early 20's newgrad who's single and got barely any roots put down, or the mid-40's senior engineer who doesn't want to give up their mostly paid off house and go through the stress of their kids changing schools?

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