This 7/16 inch bolt was one of a few that were holding down a motorized winch that pulled a 900 pair telephone cable through an underground conduit. It got a little bit difficult at the end. :-O
2020-07-30 Climate Change, Meat & Dairy Products, 4 A-bombs a second!
See question 5 about meat. This also applies to dairy products, especially milk.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/28/science/what-is-climate-change.html
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5. Will reducing meat in my diet really help the climate?
Yes, beef especially.
Agriculture of all types produces greenhouse gases that warm the planet, but meat production is especially harmful — and beef is the most environmentally damaging form of meat. Some methods of cattle production demand a lot of land, contributing to destruction of forests; the trees are typically burned, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Other methods require huge amounts of water and fertilizer to grow food for the cows.
The cows themselves produce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes short-term warming. Meat consumption is rising worldwide as the population grows, and as economic development makes people richer and better able to afford meat.
This trend is worrisome. Studies have found that if the whole world were to start eating beef at the rate Americans eat it, produced by the methods typically used in the United States, that alone might erase any chance of staying below an internationally agreed-upon limit on global warming. Pork production creates somewhat lower emissions than beef production, and chicken lower still. So reducing your meat consumption, or switching from beef and pork to chicken in your diet, are moves in the right direction. Of course, as with any kind of behavioral change meant to benefit the climate, this will only make a difference if lots of other people do it, too, reducing the overall demand for meat products.
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Equivalent to 4 Atomic bombs every second!
https://skepticalscience.com/4-Hiroshima-bombs-worth-of-heat-per-second.html
2020-07-29 Women Who Regret Voting For Trump
“Flush the turd on November the 3rd!”
It will “Make America Great Again!”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/29/women-who-voted-trump-who-regret-decision
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In Oklahoma, a solidly Republican state that few expect Biden to win, Nancy Shively, a special education teacher who lives in the outskirts of Tulsa, is similarly disenchanted.
She has been donating to Democratic candidates, and like Rey Haft plans to vote all blue.
“I am more angry with the people in power who have enabled Donald Trump than I am with Donald Trump,” Shively said.
“Donald Trump is clearly a flawed human being. He’s incapable of having any kind of empathy or thinking about anybody other than himself. That being said, he could not have wreaked as much damage as he has without other people enabling him to do that.
“Every single Republican senator that failed to fulfill their constitutional oath is complicit. And so in my opinion, all of them, with the possible exception of Mitt Romney, need to never hold public office again.”
Shively, 61, has two autoimmune diseases, and is particularly concerned at the Trump administration’s determination to reopen schools in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. In Oklahoma, where cases are surging after the state hurried to reopen, the situation is particularly dangerous.
“As embarrassed as I am that I voted for Trump, if I have to go back in the classroom, the fact that I voted for him and he has been such a disaster in dealing with this virus, that vote could mean I’m not gonna live,” Shively said.
It has been Trump’s failings on coronavirus – as of Tuesday the US had recorded more than 4.2m cases of Covid-19, and nearly 147,000 people had died – that came as the final straw for Shively.
She and her husband are in the process of updating their wills ahead of her return to school, and she is struggling to come to terms with the impact of her vote.
“There’s a straight line between his election and 140,000 dead Americans, that didn’t need to die. It just makes me incredibly sad. And regretful.” >>
In 2016 some women said they voted for Trump and cried after. Some women said they voted for Trump and had to bathe after; they felt filthy. They would have voted for Hillary but the Russians’ “active measures” poisoned so many peoples’ minds about Hillary that they couldn’t vote for her. If only the Russian interference had been known well before the election, things might have turned out differently and we wouldn’t be in this mess we’re in.
2020-07-28 Solar Power & Afghan Opium Production; Renewables vs. Other
Solar Power Has Transformed Afghan Opium Production
This crazy story isn’t one that’s for the better. But Solar power has transformed the poppy growers in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. Crazy world.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53450688
Renewables Outpaced Coal and Nuclear to start 2020.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/07/27/renewables-have-outpaced-nuclear-and-coal-to-start-2020/
2020-07-27 Trump defies SCOTUS Order Regarding DACA; Bioterrorism?
No, he can’t do that. What part of NO doesn’t he understand?
What does the government have to do to get the executive branch of government to comply with the Supreme Court’s order? Does the Supreme Court have to declare that the chief executive is in contempt of court? Does the Supreme Court have to declare that the executive branch is violating the law? Does the Supreme Court have to detain the chief executive in custody, have the vice president take over and direct the Dept of Justice to do what the court has ordered? Do we have to have another impeachment proceeding?
What the hell is this country turning into? A bunch of dysfunctional branches?
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/daca-donald-trump-supreme-court.amp
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Unsolicited Seeds from China arrive in peoples’ mail. May be invasive species?
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/china-seeds-americans-mail-unsolicited/
2020-07-26 Facebook Content Moderation
I’m reading “Facebook” by Steven Levy. In ‘The Ugly’ chapter he explains how FB hires or contracts for thousands of moderators to take down content that violates their standards. These moderators may be psychologically harmed by all the nasty stuff that’s posted. And some things are borderline, they have a difficult time deciding if it should be removed. The questionable content may have to be referred up the chain of command.
My thoughts are that why is FB hiring so many people to do this job? The users who are making the complaints should be the ones who ‘shoot down’ the questionable content. The one who complained should be given a ‘magazine’ of virtual ammo, maybe 9 rounds, and he can shoot out pixels by clicking on the questionable content. If enough viewers complain, the content will be nearly unreadable and will no longer have users complaining. If a single or a few viewers believe it’s offensive, then the questionable content will survive with a few damaged spots but otherwise okay.
Another way to slow down the legibility of the content is to fracture the photo or text so that it is difficult to read or view. Sort of like tearing a photo up into strips or pieces. The more disarray there is, the more difficult the viewer will have comprehending the content. Or the content could be made distorted or wavy like they do to the Captcha photos that users see but machines can’t read.
The whole procedure can be made into entertainment, like a game or puzzle. The viewers will be the content moderators who judge the content and decide to censor it. The viewers can be assigned a maximum amount of virtual ammo during a certain time, like a day or week. The viewers could have to earn ammo by the number of items of questionable content they process.
There are over 3 Billion FB users and there should be many times the number needed to process all the questionable content that is posted. And there would be very little chance of subjecting any single person to content that could cause psychological damage.
2020-07-25 John Lewis Civil Rights Icon
As Mark Shields said, Congress should restore the Voting Rights Act that was damaged by the SCOTUS in 2013. Renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge to the late John Lewis’ name is far too little, John Lewis deserved more.
Don’t weep for John Lewis’ passing, weep for the tangled mess he left behind.
2020-07-24 Hydrogen Electrolyzers Planned For Europe
From
<< Even green hydrogen, which is in its infancy today, could overtake new hydro capacity in Europe over the coming decade. This month, the European Union set a target of 40 gigawatts of electrolyzer capacity by 2030, up from 250 megawatts today. >>
[The US should be planning at least that much.]
<< Still, Andrews cautioned that hydropower’s natural advantages may dim as technologies such as green hydrogen begin to mature.
Hydrogen is “a fuel which can be used over multiple vectors: to power cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes [and] to blend into existing gas networks to meet peak winter heat demand, as well as to convert back into power.”
“Hydrogen can also be transported both within countries and internationally,” Andrews added. “This international dimension gives the hydrogen economy an additional cachet which even innovative pumped hydro solutions will struggle to match.” >>
