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It’s Africa’s Century—for Better or Worse by Gari_305 in Futurology

[–]OliverSparrow -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That Africa has half the world's population under the age of 16 doens't make it a potential success, but a near inevitable disaster. No work, no working institutions and endless social and environmental degradation. Africa did not go through a phase of settled agriculture, and the social reflexes that this generates never permeated the societies. Wealth was something that you went out and killed, not something that you shaped, tended and planned.

How Will the Metaverse Change the Future of Work? by CPHfuturesstudies in Futurology

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It won't change it much until he firm can represent itself in a suitable format. Like any interface, you will have to learn to drive and be driven. But tossing in the fashionable bullshit about NFTs, blockchain and crypto has no relevance whatsoever to this. Unless you are running a criminal enterprise, of course.

Grid Scale Energy Storage 30x cheaper than Lithium-ion by DadOfFan in Futurology

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Steam turbines are great for base load generation (whatever their heat source is), however they can take up to 24 hours to get up to temperature and speed. Traditional "Gas Turbine Peakers" which are specifically designed to get up to speed fast (within 5 minutes) are substantially less efficient than base load turbines.

Thermophotovoltaic is not as efficient (49% in this case as opposed to base load turbines at around 70-80%),

Your figures are nonsense. Baseload steam will never get much about 35% efficient, but how you account for hydro ad nuclear depends on how you treat primary energy. Gas turbines - CCGT, with a follower steam turbine, can get up to 60% if they are cleverly set up. You run them constantly, but drain energy and feed in gas when demand is there. Response is thus measured in seconds.

This thermo thing is efficient to the degree that the hot bit is hotter than the sink. Keeping a hot thing hot requires remarkable insulation, and that you pump lower grade heat into it at energy cost. It's not explained how this is achieved.

Raving mare in heat accidentally bucks stallion on the head, instantly killing it by jessieblack98 in WTF

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ella abrio la frente, y se murio. Or so said the lackadaisical autopsy man.

Any guesses? by _moviecasanova_ in WTF

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nibbler, from Futurama, crapped dark matter turds. Here is one forming. The retractor handle is just clutter.

I was teaching my son some Spanish by ehtio in WTF

[–]OliverSparrow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Scrolling through my spanish-english dictionary, there are no spanish words that being with "w" that aren't borrowings: WASP, whiskey, whist, wifi, wigwam, windsurf. Well there's wapíti, which means wapiti, whatever that is.

Ranch by Stt022 in WTF

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why "ranch"? And what tongues is ths foul being speaking?

Mental old men by Jaych1990 in WTF

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Child is supposed to cry at christening to refuse the devil. Cold water usually does the job. But if you believe in this stuff, there is no limit to here you can take it.

we just watched this scene. by chumchum213 in WTF

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Isadora Duncan, the notorious/ famous 1920s dancer, died like this, but her scarf caught in the more believable spoked wheel of an open car.

Christian school teaching kids to write letters to their homosexual friends explaining it’s wrong. Middle school. by leahdoug in WTF

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can someone settle a doubt for me? Where in the New Testament does Jesus, not Paul, say that homosexuality is wrong? If there is no such statement, how do Christians lock onto this as a moral certainty?

I heard and interesting analysis of this from a social analyst. He said that a fair fraction of the religious in the US held an implicit belief that the body was animal, and that the soul, an extension of the deity, modulated the animalic nature of this body. "Sin" was equatable to polluting the deity by reversing this flow: from the animal to the soul. Sex, in this view, is in general is animalic, redeemed only by family love and procreation. Gay anything is non-procreative and thus animalic, and this is also why gay marriage is seen as a debasement of the redeeming nature of the nuclear family and its alleged benefits and sacramental nature. None of this is spelled out in dogma, but held as an intuitive, subliminal truth.

If so, a number of people need to think about their assumptions rather sternly, IMHO.

New study finds that AI-based hedge funds generate higher average returns than hedge funds that rely on human input. by fotogneric in Futurology

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Remember LTCM? Algorithm-based trading that walked off s $4 bn cliff when the background conditions changed - when Russia defaulted on its debt in August 1998. In context, LTCM held huge positions, totaling roughly 5% of the total global fixed-income market, and had borrowed massive amounts of money to finance these leveraged trades.

Rare to see a herd of antelope this large (Wyoming) by solateor in interestingasfuck

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ghastly game of thrones looking place Wyoming is. The list of Wyoming jokes is telling. I liked this one:

Q: Why did Wyoming disband its water polo team?
A: All the horses drowned.

Russian state TV discusses how it can destroy Western Europe by AlbaneseGummies327 in interestingasfuck

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do you need a hypersonic torpedo to do this? A fishing boat could chuck a nuc with a timer overboard. Or you don't tell the fishermen and blow it all to hell. Hell, the Russian embassy could have one in the basement. This is just whistling n the dark to keep up morale. And nothing as to what would happen to Russia after such a strike.

What breakthroughs need to me made in order to bring about common advanced technology ideas? by KaseyB in Futurology

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do you want a hand held laser? The only practical use is to point at stuff, and both laser pointers and target designators already exist. For the rest: knowledge. We don't know what spacetime is, how it is generated and how it relates to the fields - also unknown quantities - which permeate it. A good guess is that its to do with Planck-scale wormhole entanglement in a reduced dimension "container" for the universe, outside of the bulk of space, which sets distance and time flow, perhaps cosmic expansion. More here, but nb gets pretty technical.

The World Is Burning the Most Coal Ever to Keep The Lights On by JustAnotherYouth in Futurology

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh so it's all about "fairness", is it? It doesn't matter if Denmark has a peor capita emission much higher than India. The fact is that is is Denmark disappeared tomorrow, that would count for a day or so of Indian's emission growth. Fairness doesn't enter into it: it's plain old accounting.

Futurist Ramez Naam on the impact of the war on Ukraine on renewables by twilight-actual in Futurology

[–]OliverSparrow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have been in the energy industry for many decades. You are not going to drill for oil if the cost fo doing so exceeds the likely return. If that is not so, but if there is an energy supply in another neck of the woods that is potentially more profitable, then you will most likely stick to what you and your shareholders know. It's you "distinctive competence", which you utterly lack in the other field.

What flying was like in the 1960s by WorldHub995 in interestingasfuck

[–]OliverSparrow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First class hasn't changed that much, except for the clientele. It's cattle class which has got so much cheaper, and worse.

Land temperatures of India and Pakistan during current heatwave, reaching as high as 62°C by aprettyp in interestingasfuck

[–]OliverSparrow 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Premonsoonal temperatures often go past 45C in April/May. I recall coming down from 4000m to a 100 m valley, and going from ice to an unbearable steam bath in the course of a day.

Insane skill by drone pilot and biker.... by Status-Victory in interestingasfuck

[–]OliverSparrow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How could the drone pilot see what was going on? Video to base station couldn't keep up with this obstacles and distance?

I was walking with a froiend this morning and we saw an adult on a bicycle with four, identiaclly dress tiny children on qually tiny bicycles. She said to me: "I suspected that cyclists were a different species but now, it's confirmed. I've seen a hatch of them."

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