NonStandardDeviation's recent activity
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Comment on The spiralling cost of insuring against climate disasters – rising home premiums are a de facto ‘carbon price’ on consumers as extreme weather events become more frequent in ~enviro
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Comment on UAE corruption beyond description means COP28 is likely over before it starts — Bill McKibben in ~enviro
NonStandardDeviation LinkIf you like climate Youtubers, here's Just Have a Think on Sultan Al-Jaber and the oil industry's hijacking of COP28 (see also greenwashing, the fox guarding the henhouse), and Al Gore's talk,...- Exemplary
If you like climate Youtubers, here's Just Have a Think on Sultan Al-Jaber and the oil industry's hijacking of COP28 (see also greenwashing, the fox guarding the henhouse), and Al Gore's talk, What the Fossil Fuel Industry Doesn't Want You To Know | Al Gore | TED , about how the fossil fuel industry has used lies to capture the policy-making process around the world, including COP28.
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UAE corruption beyond description means COP28 is likely over before it starts — Bill McKibben
23 votes -
Comment on US coal power plants killed at least 460,000 people in past twenty years – report in ~enviro
NonStandardDeviation Link ParentPeople are frustratingly bad at assessing danger. People fear newsworthy but rare plane crashes more than mundane but deadly car crashes, scary and badly-understood nuclear accidents over...People are frustratingly bad at assessing danger. People fear newsworthy but rare plane crashes more than mundane but deadly car crashes, scary and badly-understood nuclear accidents over thousands of daily air pollution deaths. (I think this bias is the availability heuristic?)
To blame human nature for holding back nuclear or pedestrian-friendly/transit-first development (to avoid vehicular homicides) etc. might be unproductive. However, I would say that the fossil fuel industry and carmakers have definitely exploited this bias in fearmongering campaigns against their competitors, and this is something I feel we can fight, in the micro by educating friends and family, and in the macro by pushing for an educated society, changing culture, and regulating misinformation.
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Comment on Sam Altman’s second coming sparks new fears of the AI apocalypse in ~tech
NonStandardDeviation LinkI am personally very skeptical about claims by AI companies that they can be trusted to regulate themselves via "mandatory self-regulation through codes of conduct". Regulatory capture is bad...I am personally very skeptical about claims by AI companies that they can be trusted to regulate themselves via "mandatory self-regulation through codes of conduct". Regulatory capture is bad enough; we don't need tech companies to start the game on the final square of the board. We need regulation around not only the big matters such as erosion of democratic institutions and manipulation of public sentiment (aka superpowered a propaganda machine; see Oops! We Automated Bullshit for the suggestion that AI has automated politicians' ability to sway voters using content-free speech) but also the more mundane problems of "job displacement, around discrimination, around transparency and accountability."
And for all the non-profit declarations from OpenAI, I believe this quote from Satya Nadella expresses all we need to know: "I’ll be very, very clear: We’re never going to get back into a situation where we get surprised like this, ever again." Microsoft and money are solidly in control.
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Sam Altman’s second coming sparks new fears of the AI apocalypse
28 votes -
Comment on New College: How Ron DeSantis is forcing Florida brain drain by targeting an LGBTQ+ campus in ~lgbt
NonStandardDeviation LinkAmong other targets in the culture war, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has attacked critical race theory and gender studies. The takeover of New College is one battle. Since January of 2023,...Among other targets in the culture war, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida has attacked critical race theory and gender studies. The takeover of New College is one battle. Since January of 2023, DeSantis appointees have worked to remake the formerly quite queer liberal arts college into a Christian conservative college. They have ended the gender studies program and aggressively recruited male students to counter the 'feminization' of the school. 40% of the professors resigned before fall classes.
Teen Vogue here presents a close look at the lived experience of students who have fled from the increasingly hostile cultural environment to Hampshire College in Massachusetts. They describe the unique properties of New College that have been lost, how they resisted, and their lives in exile. These students, their hoped-for learning experiences, and the institution that hosted them are casualties of our war of values and politicized education, as Americans fight over what schools can teach and how these young citizens can live.
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New College: How Ron DeSantis is forcing Florida brain drain by targeting an LGBTQ+ campus
24 votes -
Comment on The unexpected climate policy that could tackle both national debt and China: Carbon pricing has the potential to become a bipartisan policy in ~enviro
NonStandardDeviation LinkGiven the recent House Speaker kerfuffle and the anti-climate extremist who got picked, I feel Rooney is being optimistic about the prospects, but I suppose he has a background as a Republican...Given the recent House Speaker kerfuffle and the anti-climate extremist who got picked, I feel Rooney is being optimistic about the prospects, but I suppose he has a background as a Republican that makes this a bit more credible.
That said, I've always seen this proposal as one that would rebate the collected money back to people to make the tax more progressive (and avoid unduly burdening poor people), so I'm not sure about using it as a revenue device. And if it works, the revenue collection goes to zero, but I guess that'll take a while to happen.
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The unexpected climate policy that could tackle both national debt and China: Carbon pricing has the potential to become a bipartisan policy
26 votes -
Comment on Common degus can spontaneously learn to use a tiny rake to retrieve out-of-reach sunflower seeds in ~life.pets
NonStandardDeviation LinkUtterly adorable. Source: Tool-Use Training in a Species of Rodent: The Emergence of an Optimal Motor Strategy and Functional Understanding -
Common degus can spontaneously learn to use a tiny rake to retrieve out-of-reach sunflower seeds
12 votes -
Comment on ‘Don’t Look Up’ director Adam McKay wants to win the climate information war — with memes in ~enviro
NonStandardDeviation Link ParentThe idea that it's too late and we should give up is actively being pushed by oil companies. To give in to pessimism is to aid them. There is a case for optimism. Severe consequences are likely,...The idea that it's too late and we should give up is actively being pushed by oil companies. To give in to pessimism is to aid them. There is a case for optimism. Severe consequences are likely, but incremental changes can still save lives and livelihoods. In the US, air pollution kills about 250,000 people per year, but some 92% of new energy projects in the permitting pipeline are solar and wind, only 7.5% natural gas. If legislation (something from about dozen current proposals) can speed that buildout by 1 year, that's thousands of lives saved. More systematically, Canada, Europe, Japan, and other countries already have carbon pricing to reduce emissions.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-deniers-shift-tactics-to-inactivism/
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Comment on ‘Don’t Look Up’ director Adam McKay wants to win the climate information war — with memes in ~enviro
NonStandardDeviation Link ParentYou can do both. I'm literally meeting with my congressperson next week in person to push for a suite of legislation that will have an impact, and which in my opinion has a very good chance of...You can do both. I'm literally meeting with my congressperson next week in person to push for a suite of legislation that will have an impact, and which in my opinion has a very good chance of passing, ranging from reforestation to more wind energy.
It'll help though if we push the zeitgeist away from the climate denalism pushed by oil companies' PR firms. I want their stuff to get downvoted and flooded out of the meme space so that the average Joe doesn't have a chance to get indoctrinated.
Stop with the defeatism. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Every bit helps.
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Comment on ‘Don’t Look Up’ director Adam McKay wants to win the climate information war — with memes in ~enviro
NonStandardDeviation LinkSome example posts of their darkly satirical humor: 13 Differences Between Oil Executives and AI Robots: They may appear similar, but here’s how to tell them apart. Money, it's great! How does...Some example posts of their darkly satirical humor:
How does Bernard Looney, CEO of British Petroleum, stay so positive?
There's definitely a time and place for serious factual debate, but given that oil companies are well-known to act in bad faith with "public relations" misinformation (aka propaganda) campaigns, we might as well fight the firehose of falsehood with humor. In the Ukraine war, for example NAFO has been quite effective in countering Russian propaganda and disinformation by means of shitposting, more or less bullying Kremlin stooges off the Internet by spamming doge memes.
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‘Don’t Look Up’ director Adam McKay wants to win the climate information war — with memes
16 votes -
Comment on Multi-layer reactive foil: no fuel, no oxygen, tons of heat in ~science
NonStandardDeviation LinkThis is a shorter one from Ben—I was expecting him to try making it himself. Still, his videos are always great!This is a shorter one from Ben—I was expecting him to try making it himself. Still, his videos are always great!
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Comment on The unique merger that made you (and ewe, and yew) in ~science
NonStandardDeviation LinkThe Unique Merger That Made You (and Ewe, and Yew): All sophisticated life on the planet Earth may owe its existence to one freakish event. The endosymbiotic event in which an archaea host took on...The Unique Merger That Made You (and Ewe, and Yew): All sophisticated life on the planet Earth may owe its existence to one freakish event.
The endosymbiotic event in which an archaea host took on an endosymbiotic prokaryote that would evolve into mitochondria is posited as a rare and critical event, never repeated in all of Earth's history, a step change rather than a gradual one, a step that enabled an explosion of complexity via vastly expanded cellular energy budgets. Perhaps the rarity of this event even explains the Fermi paradox.
The energetics of genome complexity by Nick Lane and William Martin (Nature, 2010) is only 5 pages long and has been an excellent follow-up read. I've found it fascinating and quite accessible, despite not being a biologist. (However, I admit I still don't understand the scaling that results in 0.003 fW/Mb (or ".0005 fW per gene, a 230,000-fold reduction") in the first paragraph of page 3.)
If I am not mistaken, the Lane and Martin's argument is that the critical innovation of mitochondria is their separation of DNA that must exist in numerous copies near the metabolic machinery it controls (mitochondrial DNA), from the DNA that needs only to exist in small copy numbers (nuclear DNA). Large prokaryotic cells need many copies of their entire genome spaced throughout the cell to control their respiratory metabolic activity (specifically, a genome per some area of bioenergetic membranes), a task eukaryotes accomplish using miniaturized mitochondrial genomes (that only contain the small number of necessary genes for this task).
Freed from the need to have so many copies of all their genes, eukaryotes could develop larger, more complex, and more specialized nuclear genomes (about 3000 megabases of DNA, or 20,000 genes, compared to an average prokaryote's 6Mb of DNA and 5,000 genes) while growing much larger (40,100 picograms vs an average prokaryote's 2.6 picograms). The overall result is a vastly enhanced energy budget per megabase of DNA (0.76 picowatts/Mb in eukaryotes vs. 0.08 pW/Mb), or a even higher enhancement of power per gene (115 femtowatts per gene in eukaryotes vs. 0.1fW/gene in prokaryotes) when considering the lower gene density of eukaryotes (about 12 genes per megabase in eukaryotes vs 500-1000 genes per megabase in prokaryotes).
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The unique merger that made you (and ewe, and yew)
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
NonStandardDeviation LinkI've been reading a lot of Peter Watts, a former biologist known for philosophical diamond-hard sci-fi that explores topics such as the nature of consciousness. One of my favorite short stories,...I've been reading a lot of Peter Watts, a former biologist known for philosophical diamond-hard sci-fi that explores topics such as the nature of consciousness.
One of my favorite short stories, even if it's a bit off to the side of Watts' oeuvre (The Rifters trilogy, Blindsight/Echopraxia, and the Sunflowers Cycle), is The Second Coming of Jasmine Fitzgerald, which is about a physicist who kills her husband while trying to save him from cancer. It reminds me a bit of a harder-edged Anathem (by Neal Stephenson) in its use of quantum mechanics and exploration of the nature of reality. It's also more hopeful than a lot of his work, odd as that might sound.
If people are going to be paying for climate change, they might as well put it on the responsible polluters with an actual carbon price. (Yes, many countries already have one; I'm speaking to the laggards, yes, you, United States, you're the big one.) At least pass the PROVE IT Act and set up a carbon border adjustment for a start so we aren't paying for dirty industry overseas.