maarsen

With any luck it will fill the water reservoirs that have been dangerously low the last few years. Sort of a silver lining to those clouds.

Like Flashman I can put that down to a public school education.

I have serious doubt that a private school education is superior to a publicly funded school system. Are private schools repositories of esoteric knowledge that is unavailable to the rest of us? Are the teachers a better class of human beings than the rest of the population and more able to access the esoteric knowledge hidden in their schools. The only difference is better funding at the expense of those of us who have not the ability to send our kids there. As I see it a lot of the reasons for private schools is to keep your kids away from the real world and its issues for as long as possible. If you really want a good education for your child, surround them with books and other resources so they can explore the world around them and actually learn and grow.

I see too many people buying way more camera than they need pushed by advertising implying that that is what is needed to do photography well. I have been going the other way using simpler and simpler cameras. Any way, good luck with your photography.

Same here. I even did a research paper on dreams and there is nothing to the content of your dreams that has any importance. People do have recurring dreams or anxiety dreams but considering that most people do not remember dreams, and if you do, as soon as you wake up or begin moving muscles, the memory fades away. Why we dream is a whole other problem and one I don't really have answers to. All animals with a nervous system seem to dream but why is a big question.

So today I am on YT checking out a few channels I follow and up pops a Brendan Kavanaugh video. I occasionally watch his videos because I really enjoy the way he plays public pianos in England. Only this time he is in a bit of trouble with a few members of the Chinese government and/or their agents for videoing himself playing, in a public space, on a piano set up just for that purpose.

Nice camera but the skill of the photographer behind it is the reason for the photo. Whether a Nikon or a Pentax, or a Canon was used the photo would be as arresting. I use a Yashicamat TLR that I bought used for $100 in the 80s, and according to the serial # it was built in 1957. I would put that up against any 35 mm camera for photo quality just because the negative is almost 4 times bigger. Slide film in that camera is amazing. Too bad Kodak never made Kodachrome in that format. Anyway, enjoy the camera as lenses and accessories are still available.

I suspect that the worldwide runup in real estate prices before Covid is a direct effect of knowledgable investors getting out of Evergrande before the extent of the insolvency was known. I imagine there are shortsellers who have made a large fortune shorting the stock.

I think the word for such people is 'Tankie'. Unwavering support of any regime that opposes the West.

I have seen that behavior many times. Women that are smarter than them and would never have a relationship with them scare the snot out of them.

I have read Babel-17 many years ago and I suspect it will hold up especially if you have an interest in language. Delaney was never big on space opera but language and the nuances it comes with and the problems that can arise are one of his themes. It is not a large book like Dhalgren, which I would not recommend unless you really like Babel-17.

I still remember going to work one morning on a cold winter's day and seeing a car in front of me trailing a 100' extension cord.

The content may come from Trump, but I seriously doubt that a man who cannot form a coherent sentence when using a teleprompter can do so on a cell phone. Someone is doing the big words for him.

And where does the battery heating energy come from? Extremely long extension cords?

Yeah, that is basic chemistry. Reactions slow down in the cold.

I am curious how that little nub in Lake of the Woods gets built when you have to go into Canada to access it. Or even Point Robert's outside of Vancouver

Batteries don't do well in cold weather. If you get a prolonged cold snap In Minneapolis, your EV becomes useless.

Anecdotal evidence here but I have been thinking the same thing since the late 70s when reading Isaac Asimov's autobiography. He mentioned how his parents emigrated from Russia to the US in the early 1900s when the US had an open door immigration policy.Apparently this policy was stopped and the immigration door slammed shut in 1928. And the 1929 saw the start of the Great Depression. Coincidence or not? Asimov did not link the two events but since then I have always wondered and being the person I am, opted since then for much looser immigration laws and borders.

Here in Canada, no official of the Chinese government put pressure on people with relatives in China but somehow people would come and show photos of those relatives in China to MPs/MLAs or would be MPs/MLAs here in Canada and suggest life will be easier for them in China if they were more friendly to the regime in the House or Legislature.

Well I just came across an online article stating that Danish researchers have proved mathematically that AI algorithms are inherently unstable for all but the simplest tasks. Many years ago Roger Penrose stated that AI is a pipe dream due to it being a violation of Godel's incompleteness theorem. Good thing I had the sense to believe Penrose all these years and not waste my time and money.

Here in Canada we have had many allegations of Chinese interference in federal and provincial politics, particularly focused on those who criticize the regime even in mild forms. It is no stretch of the imagination that they would do the same for the Hugo awards. It would be so much easier to do when they are all in your country and they can show the example of Canada's Two Michaels as an example. For those who don't know Michaels Kovrig and Spavor were arrested and held on spying charges after the RCMP arrested Meng Wanzhou , of Huawei, for money laundering.

On the good news side, a vaccine for malaria is being rolled out in Cameroon for children. Considering that malaria is still one of the deadliest diseases around I certainly applaud this effort to vaccinate children.

For humans this is not a viable method. Once a problem becomes hard enough, the increase in time needed to solve it becomes exponentially long. Think of factoring a large number to see if it is prime. With 'n' digits the time is X to the exponent n times long.

When you use water as rocket fuel, don't expect much.

The scientific method had a very good record of predicting the future of inanimate objects. Religions not so much. As for animate objects, the scientific method does work but not as well as it could, but with improvements every time I look. Again, with religions or philosophies, not so much. However much I enjoy studying philosophy, we really have not made much progress since Plato's time. The only real progress was in 2009 when David Wolpert proved with mathematics that in any universe, any being in that universe cannot know all of the laws of nature in that universe. Any being outside of said universe can know all the laws but cannot interact with that universe. Omnipotence and omniscience are both impossible in our universe. The best we can do is a theory of almost everything. The proof is on Wikipedia for those who understand the math. As this is an extension of Godel's incompleteness theorem to the physical sciences, I suspect it will be as hard to accept but until someone refutes either we seem to be in a godless universe.