Seems like it might carry the slight risk of someone cheating to intentionally become a frog for the lols?

The last bit about the big bang isn’t really how it works to my understanding. The big bang is compared to an explosion, but its actually more like a balloon inflating, if you imagine the surface of the balloon as analogous to space. The galaxies don’t all move away from some original center to the universe, new bits of space get “added” in between every bit of space, so that every object gets farther away from every other object. If you go backwards in time far enough, every point sees itself as being the center. At least, that’s how I’ve seen it explained.

The issue with ICBM interception as I understand it is that it’s one of those cases where the economics heavily favor the attacker. An intercept missile requires a rocket just as capable the one launching the target, if not more so. But, you can’t afford letting even a few nukes get through, even one is devasting, so given that the chance of a successful intercept isn’t 100 percent (my understanding is that it’s well below 100% currently, for likely real world conditions), you need several intercept missiles for every missile your enemy has. Any countermeasures that make taking the enemy missile out harder, like deploying decoys or such, increases the needed resources on your end far more than it increases the resources used by them.

It might be viable against countries like North Korea where the difference in resources is vast enough, but against any serious opponent like Russia or China, it’s not likely to work out.

It is fundamentally less efficient to run electrolysis on water to produce hydrogen, and then reverse the process again in a fuel cell to produce electricity to turn a motor, vs taking the electricity used for that electrolysis and storing it in a battery that is then taken back out to turn a motor. Granted, modern lithium battery chemistry isn’t the cleanest thing to extract and use, but it’s also not the only possible battery chemistry, just the one currently most used for vehicle batteries. It also doesn’t allow for certain benefits to BEV like home charging (I mean technically one could run a hydrogen line to one’s house, but that doesn’t seem likely). The only scenario I can think of for hydrogen cars taking off is if the needed infrastructure was built out for something else and so was readily available. I could maybe see that if hydrogen ends up getting used as the solution for decarbonized aviation fuel, but my understanding was that it (along with basically every other proposed tech for that admittedly) had some pretty serious cost drawbacks and so there’s no garuntee of it getting built out for even that application.

Hydrogen cars aren’t even something likely to catch on at this point anyway I’d think, despite Toyota’s attempts to the contrary. Battery-electric cars have improved a lot of late making the advantage in range from using an energy dense chemical fuel less apparent, and hydrogen has to deal with both lower energy efficiency and the fact that hydrogen storage is rather difficult, while the infrastructure getting built has overwhelmingly been EV charging rather than hydrogen filling stations.

It can be produced in a renewable manner even if it currently usually isn’t (though it is a net consumer of energy to create it that way, so it’s more like a sort of battery when used that way than an energy source), so if the downsides can be worked around and the economics worked out (a difficult proposition I expect given hydrogen is in a similar position and all the issues that one has) it has potential to work as a renewable vehicle fuel.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/bda1fe3b9784777fd550b776d1e89364/tumblr_inline_ow6sw7yn1j1spja7s_400.gif

(Hecc, not sure how to make that embed)

I assume that the whole “Stalin starved his people” thing isn’t talking about the average conditions of the Soviet Union during more “normal” times, but rather specific events of mass starvation like the Holodomor. That being said, famine caused by accidental or malicious management of agriculture is something hardly unique to any single economic system (I imagine a comparison could be made to the Irish potato famine there, for an example of a similar type of disaster under a different economic system), so I’m not sure if it reflects entirely on the kind of system the Soviets were going for as much as it does mistakes in the process of transitioning to that system, and malfeasance on the part of those in charge in pushing the consequences of those mistakes upon disfavored groups.

The time of entertainment per dollar is probably a bit different too I think. Depending on the replayability of the game in question, one can buy a game and get enjoyment out of it for hundreds or in some cases over a thousand hours. Meanwhile, even if you really enjoy a movie and rewatch it like 10 different times, that’s still only like 20 hours. Movies tend to be cheaper to buy than games individually, but I suspect that buying enough movies to make up the time difference would make the movies significantly more expensive.

It’s very similar to the concept of blood libel I think, just directed at a different group than that term usually refers to. Which, given what that kind of thing historically has led to, is extremely concerning coming from such a public figure.

Realistically she’s got quite a few of those, but when given a bad but not fundamentally different from what one had before option, and a make everything far worse option, and a situation that makes trying to choose a third option an exercise in futility, the choice is a no-brainer.

Because the candidates do have those responsibilities, but have shirked them. Ideally, we’d want a better voting system, that didn’t mathematically garuntee that only two viable parties emerge, so that when the politicians refuse to use their power as they should, people who will may be chosen instead, but we don’t have that, and changing that is a long and difficult process that only gets harder if the more authoritarian types get power anyway. If you’re in a lifeboat with holes, and there are two people that have rigged things so that one of them is going to be in charge, and one wants to stop bailing out water and the other wants to scoop it back into the boat, then even though those two aren’t following their responsibilities, it doesn’t mean you should stop bailing the water out, because it has to get done by somebody or you drown. And if you have a say in which of the two is in charge, the guy that just wants to sit there uselessly is still the option you must pick, because at least they aren’t trying to undo the progress you’re making. Ideally you’d want to figure out how to undo the rigged system too, but you have to deal with the water first, lest you all drown fighting over who’s in charge.

I’m not arguing that this idea in particular is necessarily a good one, just that the concept of making the service more efficient has merit. Obviously, to actually see the benefits, the idea in question has to actually succeed at making the service more efficient.

It shouldn’t, though to some extent, it operating more efficiently can be a good thing if the efficiency gains can be gotten without significant detriment to service, because then more money is available for either improvements to the mail service or for other services. Profit does not impy efficiency of course, but making something more efficient can make it more profitable.

hypothetically, I suppose it could alternately be done by instances just federating the number of votes from their instance and only storing who voted what internally. Though then you might get issues with very easy vote manipulation if a server just says a lot of people voted a certain way without needing to make accounts to “justify” the fake votes.

Have any of those wars come close to actually threatening the state of Israel itself, rather than just their control over territories they’d occupied from someone else? In any case, you’re also making a false assumption that ending US military aid to Israel leaves it conventionally defenseless, or that US weapons have to be stopped from going there in perpetuity. Israel has both a domestic arms industry and other countries it could acquire weapons from, it would just be at increased difficulty and expense. Further, when the objection to sending US arms there is that they are using them to commit genocide, that objection would naturally end should Israel cease those operations.

The point is not “Israel should have nothing left but the nukes, because they can just use those”, but rather “Israel’s nukes mean that a full scale invasion of the country is not likely, so we have room to revoke our current military assistance in order to pressure them to behave better, without much risk of destroying them in the meantime by doing so.”

I’m not suggesting they actually use those nukes. I’m suggesting that Iran or such will not actually launch an attack strong enough to credibly threaten to destroy Isreal, because it would be suicide to do so. The use of having nuclear weapons is that if you have them, it never makes sense to push you into condition where you feel you have to use them. Using them offensively in Gaza or the like would not be in Isreals interest for a number of reasons.

If someone’s suggestion sounds so obviously flawed that you feel the need to say that, perhaps you should take a moment and consider if they’re really implying what you think they are.

From what I understand, they’re trying to (mis)use a law to the effect that companies cant all get together and boycott a competitor in order to try to drive it out of the market. If my understanding is correct then, for example, if say Ford and GM and such happened to also run electric taxi businesses, and those taxi businesses bought cars off the open market where in theory they should buy whatever they think gives them what they need at the best price, even if from another car maker, then it wouldnt be legal for them to all go and say “we make electric cars, and Tesla does too, so lets not buy anything from Tesla, regardless of how cheap or good their products are, so they lose business” (Assuming that the Teslas in question would in fact be perfectly suitable for said taxi companies needs that is). They’re trying to sue an advertising industry group, claiming that they’ve done this kind of thing. Except the members of the group in question arent really competitors to Twitter, and in any case, the quality of advertising is thought to diminish if the ads are next to objectionable and bigoted content, since its thought to hurt the advertised company’s image, so if my understanding is correct, it should be simple enough for them to argue “We’re not colluding to hurt your company, your product just isnt up to our standards so we arent buying it”

Could one argue that since Israel pretty clearly possesses nuclear weapons even if they wont directly admit to it, that they should be able to deter attacks that actually stand a chance at threatening the existence of the country due to the threat of those weapons, and therefore already have the required advantage without additional US assistance?

Under a few specific circumstances comments can make sense, like if it’s a community for drawn stuff of one variety or another, that’s used by newer artists looking for constructive feedback.