Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
my sister mention the 10Gs they are offering in Vermont to get people to move there.
The N&G Science Discussion Thread
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my sister mention the 10Gs they are offering in Vermont to get people to move there.
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
with the last fire we had in our hood only one insurance company would insure houses. i could see this being a issue for us. The big problem would be family and jobs. My wife’s mother lives less than 5minutes away and our professional licenses are only good for CA.
wokeupnew
Well-Known Member
I want to say that it's only if you move to a more remote area of the state. I don't think it applies to Chittenden County (where Burlington is). TBH most places in Vermont are really nice, as long as you're okay with living in a more rural area. Housing in Burlington is expensive as hell. I'm in a good spot right now, but I still rent and am looking to buy soon~ prices like 30 minutes outside of town are like 50% cheaper.
EDIT: no longer active, funds have been allocated - Remote Worker Grant Program
That happened to us post Katrina. It took about 10 years of us not getting hit by big storms for insurers to start writing policies down here.
LeSamourai
Well-Known Member
On the bright side, once the oceans rise enough they'll put out the fires.
As a math nerd, this is cool as f*ck.
Scientists have identified a new rule of growth that shapes the form and development of pointy or sharp biological structures in animals and plants, such as teeth, horns, claws, beaks, and thorns.
Describing the newly found pattern as a previously unknown law of nature, the researchers call their discovery the "power cascade" – a mathematical power law found throughout nature, determining the growth and evolution of a family of shapes called power cones.
"The diversity of animals, and even plants, that follow this rule is staggering," says evolutionary biologist Alistair Evans from Monash University in Australia.
"We were quite shocked that we found it almost everywhere we looked across the kingdoms of life – in living animals, and those extinct for millions of years."
www.sciencealert.com
Scientists have identified a new rule of growth that shapes the form and development of pointy or sharp biological structures in animals and plants, such as teeth, horns, claws, beaks, and thorns.
Describing the newly found pattern as a previously unknown law of nature, the researchers call their discovery the "power cascade" – a mathematical power law found throughout nature, determining the growth and evolution of a family of shapes called power cones.
"The diversity of animals, and even plants, that follow this rule is staggering," says evolutionary biologist Alistair Evans from Monash University in Australia.
"We were quite shocked that we found it almost everywhere we looked across the kingdoms of life – in living animals, and those extinct for millions of years."
Scientists Discover a Hidden Law Behind The Pointy Bits on All Living Things
Scientists have identified a new rule of growth that shapes the form and development of pointy or sharp biological structures in animals and plants, such as teeth, horns, claws, beaks, and thorns.
www.sciencealert.com
jaycee
Well-Known Member
You know the only people who can make dinosaurs boring are paleontologists.... but this is pretty cool.As a math nerd, this is cool as f*ck.
Scientists have identified a new rule of growth that shapes the form and development of pointy or sharp biological structures in animals and plants, such as teeth, horns, claws, beaks, and thorns.
Describing the newly found pattern as a previously unknown law of nature, the researchers call their discovery the "power cascade" – a mathematical power law found throughout nature, determining the growth and evolution of a family of shapes called power cones.
"The diversity of animals, and even plants, that follow this rule is staggering," says evolutionary biologist Alistair Evans from Monash University in Australia.
"We were quite shocked that we found it almost everywhere we looked across the kingdoms of life – in living animals, and those extinct for millions of years."
Scientists Discover a Hidden Law Behind The Pointy Bits on All Living Things
Scientists have identified a new rule of growth that shapes the form and development of pointy or sharp biological structures in animals and plants, such as teeth, horns, claws, beaks, and thorns.
jaycee
Well-Known Member
Something I'm coming across a lot lately in my job, but also elsewhere in everyday life, like politics and public policy is what I feel is really bad carbon math. These are just opinions and I don't want to try and properly research what I'm saying here but I think a prime example that will help me illustrate what I'm talking about are electric vehicles and electric vehicle incentives. Are electric vehicles an object good and solving the carbon problem? I think the answer is clearly no. They are not an objective bad either and maybe the math does add up to some eventual Carbon benefit. Certainly, if you are choosing to buy a new vehicle there is some Carbon benefit depending on your use habits and the life of the vehicle BUT electric vehicles are far from Carbon neutral and rely on minerals that are not plentiful and require massively Carbon negative techniques to extract from the earth. I see this sort-of magical Carbon thinking regularly, whether it's policies around EVs or planting trees... and there are massive equity issues around carbon policies.
Not to womp-womp everyone with the math doesn't work too much, but these really complicated problems require a ton of little solutions of which EVs are one... but really it's far too late to reverse anthropogenic global warming completely and the biggest bang for everyone's carbon buck is slowing population growth... again there are massive equity issues there. I just wish that policy makers really understood that 1-1 in C math doesn't really equal zero.
Not to womp-womp everyone with the math doesn't work too much, but these really complicated problems require a ton of little solutions of which EVs are one... but really it's far too late to reverse anthropogenic global warming completely and the biggest bang for everyone's carbon buck is slowing population growth... again there are massive equity issues there. I just wish that policy makers really understood that 1-1 in C math doesn't really equal zero.
A lot of people are asking this question especially after Tesla said they would accept Bitcoin for their EV's which is counter-intuitive since Bitcoin mining produces huge amounts of greenhouse gas. This guy did the math on it:
This is how insanely bad Bitcoin is for the environment : If you buy a Tesla car (around 40 000 $) in Bitcoins, the impact of the mining of those bitcoins is around 80 tons of CO2. This is 4 times more than the saving of CO2 you can expect from this car (compared to a gasoline one) on its entire lifetime (around -20 tons).
Of course, the Bitcoins you use here will eventually be used for other transactions. But still, it gives a good point of comparison : Suppose you want to buy this car with gold. It would take 3 to 5 less energy to mine this gold than to mine the same value in Bitcoins.
What about the transaction only ?
What is the footprint of the transaction on existing bitcoins only ? Since the principle of “proof of work” is to secure the transferred funds, it is fair to split the mining cost per value transferred, rather than by number of transaction. This paper suggest that a stable ratio of 1% of transferred funds is burnt in energy.1% of 40,000$ = 400$. At 5cts / kWh (average cost of the electricity for mining), this is 8000 kWh. This is about the consumption of an average french family for two years. We showed that bitcoin mining is uses mainly fossil fuel, with an average carbon footprint of 830 g CO2 / kWh : worse than the USA mix.
8,000 * 0.830 = 6.6 tons of CO2
The footprint of the transaction erases 1/3 of the carbon saving of a Tesla car. Why would anyone do that ?
https:// medium.com/crypto-lucid/buying-a-tesla-in-bitcoins-cancels-4-times-the-co2-savings-for-its-whole-lifetime-c28b042e3b9a
And I also think it's very interesting that many wealth countries do have declining populations. It's not really a bad thing unless you add in our economic systems which all seem to work on a Ponzi scheme where our only option is growth. I really think the best way out of this is degrowth, but that's not a very popular opinion.
jaycee
Well-Known Member
Agreed. I don’t think the Carbon footprint of a Model S is positive either.
I think it’s possible to be C neutral or even negative and have economic growth and prosperity across the board but yes that likely requires a complete decoupling from the current western capitalism and political boundaries of every kind. As long as there are states that view themselves as entities in competition for limited resources the global sharing and problem solving necessary to fully address a global elemental cycle (that being C) is unlikely to have a ton (pun intended) of success.
I mean something is better than nothing probably with this stuff, but if you’re allowing people like Musk to profit off the backs of the poor and disenfranchised to do it, if you have to destroy rainforest to mine lithium do it, is it really the right thing to do? Of course nuance is not something people are very good at incorporating into their decisions.
Turbo
Well-Known Member
OMG, we have a Science nerd thread other than the COVID thread? 
This is the ACTUAL science threadOMG, we have a Science nerd thread other than the COVID thread?
Forcing individuals to calculate their "carbon footprint" is a scam. Like everything else in society we've turned a societal problem into an individual one. It's up to governments to reverse course, not for Brenda to buy a hybrid SUV instead of some gas guzzler (this is from an owner of a plug-in hybrid).
If we do talk about individual responsibilities, not having kids is the #1 thing you can do. As someone without kids partially for this reason, it's very frustrating when people scold others for something like eating meat when they have multiple children.
jaycee
Well-Known Member
Yes - 100%.
The burdens of individualism inevitably falls on those (globally) who have the least ability (financially, socially, or otherwise) to take on the ramifications of the choices of others.
I'm speaking a little out of turn here but I'm pretty sure the tragedy of the commons (myth) wasn't that people couldn't cooperate to use the resources and not destroy the commons it was that there was a fence or a wall around the commons creating the perception of finite resources that the individual must be in competition for.
Have you watched the new Adam Curtis documentary "Can't get you out of my head". It's incredible.
jaycee
Well-Known Member
No - I have not. Where do I find this thing?
Warning it's 6 parts and 8 hours long. But he's a BBC documentary maker that uses BBC archive footage to talk about how the world got to be how it currently is (fucked up). He's well known in English and Australian circles but I just discovered him.
This 'film' is mostly about how we as a world got to the default idea of individualism using case studies (Tupak, Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's wife), English housewives, Nixon, etc) and how it's shaped our modern world. And how this existing power structure makes it impossible for any one person to change the system. It can be a bit overwhelming but it's extremely hypnotic.
I AM OBSESSED WITH IT.
jaycee
Well-Known Member
Thank you. I might have to build-up some emotional capacity before I can get through it but I'm excited to watch.
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
@jaycee I thought you might like this one. Scientists are finding evidence that octopi might dream.
According to neurobiologist Philippe Mourrain at Stanford University, there has been no evidence of a single species that does not sleep. But until recently, it was thought only mammals and birds show distinct sleep states.
Increasing evidence has demonstrated that animals other than birds and mammals, such as reptiles, fish, cuttlefish – the rounder cousin of the octopus – and now octopuses show distinct sleep states. Importantly, these states are similar to what we see in humans.
In humans, vivid dreaming occurs during REM sleep. The features exhibited by octopuses during their active sleep states suggests these large-brained molluscs might be experiencing a similar phenomenon to dreaming. But unlike REM sleep in humans, active sleep in octopuses is short, ranging from seconds to one minute.
So, if an octopus is dreaming, it’s unlikely they would experience elaborate and complex plots as we do. Rather, an octopus dream would be fleeting like a Boomerang story on Instagram or a GIF.
theconversation.com
According to neurobiologist Philippe Mourrain at Stanford University, there has been no evidence of a single species that does not sleep. But until recently, it was thought only mammals and birds show distinct sleep states.
Increasing evidence has demonstrated that animals other than birds and mammals, such as reptiles, fish, cuttlefish – the rounder cousin of the octopus – and now octopuses show distinct sleep states. Importantly, these states are similar to what we see in humans.
In humans, vivid dreaming occurs during REM sleep. The features exhibited by octopuses during their active sleep states suggests these large-brained molluscs might be experiencing a similar phenomenon to dreaming. But unlike REM sleep in humans, active sleep in octopuses is short, ranging from seconds to one minute.
So, if an octopus is dreaming, it’s unlikely they would experience elaborate and complex plots as we do. Rather, an octopus dream would be fleeting like a Boomerang story on Instagram or a GIF.
Sleeping octopuses might experience fleeting dreams – new study
Colour-changing patterns in snoozing octopuses are characteristic of two alternating sleep states.
theconversation.com