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> Earth’s oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, providing a valuable carbon sink as humans burn fossil fuels. But this process also makes the oceans more acidic, which can disturb the formation of shells and coral skeletons and affect fish life cycles, per the report.

Atmospheric CO2 levels are at historic lows.[1]

Bivalves have shells and evolved during the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian explosion took place around 540 to 520 million years ago (Mya)[2].

During the early history of bivalves atmospheric CO2 levels were around 4,000-5,000ppm. Current levels are around 400ppm.

References:

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmo...

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalvia


Definitely not historic lows. Perhaps it's been higher, but it's definitely been lower than now.


In the last 400,000 years the concentration has fluctuated from about 180ppm to about 300 many times.[1] My historical reference in the previous post was the last 500,000,000 years. In that context we are low.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmo...


Since our species' collective life comprises the last 400,000 years, and we are 420ppm now, do you think it's also fair to say that we are historic highs?


Maybe ghastmaster is a super-intelligent bivalve.



It's time for the bivalves to rise again!


It's an interesting point to cherry-pick, and it's fair to question the affect of atmospheric CO2 on aquatic life, but you can't say that CO2 levels are at historic lows when they're up 30% in the past 60 years [1].

[1] - https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/


> but you can't say that CO2 levels are at historic lows when they're up 30% in the past 60 years

I thought I made it very clear the historic period I was referring to. Questioning the relevance is indeed apropos. However, the semantics, I do not understand.

Regarding the last 60 years, I think it is very unlikely that the earth has not had a period where atmospheric CO2 concentrations have not rose as quickly. The volcanism, planetary impacts, and die offs of the past had to have had similar impacts. Yet, shelled creatures survived to the extant that they are ubiquitous in the earth's waters today.

There indubitably have been extinction events and perhaps some of them have been caused by ocean acidification.


What about some of us creatures who aren't shelled? Should we be as blase about the sharp spike in CO2 as you are?


Completely irrelevant. Humans cannot survive in the conditions of the Cambrian. Merely going back to the Cambrian is enough to ensure our extinction. No one cares that the CO2 levels were higher then. What matters is that we will all be dead if we go anywhere near those levels.


I'm not sure "historic" means what you think it means. Obligatory XKCD so that no one is taken in by this spurious argument, which is often made for temperature rather than C02, https://xkcd.com/1732/.


The animals alive in it today aren't adapted to these Cambrian conditions though?


That's the $50,000,000,000,000 question.[1] Are they adapted? Will they adapt? Who knows?

1 - https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/cost-to-end-climate-chang...


Well yeah, of course it will... eventually

What we're going to extract value from in the meantime would be the question or, rather, problem


"Historic"?

I do not think it means what you think it means


500,000,000 years of my understanding of atmospheric CO2 concentration is what I was referring to as "Historic".


(Since there's no other definition of historic that I know of (500M years seems as arbitrary as any other number), I think the person was referring to the literal definition of historic, namely, written records. Not that I think this is a very fruitful argument to make, or whether weather recorded in shells could be considered written is perhaps also debatable)


Technically that's prehistoric. History conventionally starts with the invention of writing


Not sure that's conventional. Looking up the dictionary definition, it's clearly being used generally. It's the definition I was taught in school and probably it's used in this technical way in some fields or perhaps in science generally, but commenting on someone casually using "historic values" and going "I don't think you know what that means!" is the best way to help anyone get a better understanding of anything

("conventional" in meaning 1 of the word as per Wordnik, namely that it's in accordance with general practice, before we start another such discussion...)


You’re right that "history" starts with writing, but "prehistoric" refers to the human period before written records, starting with the use of stone tools around 2.5 million years ago.


> You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we all possess

By learning the techniques they employ, a subconscious manipulation by them, becomes a conscious observation by us. Education defeats these methods. An argument could be made that more money will be spent to continually find deeper subconscious manipulations. I would wager, the ROI would diminish quickly.

I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority, but I can out wit a billboard.


>Education defeats these methods.

It does not. For example young women and girls, even when knowing that an image of a fashion model is photoshopped, still exhibit drops in their self body image.

>I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government.

In many cases these two things are the same, due to the prevalence and efficacy of lobbying

>I can out wit a billboard.

Lots of people believe this, but it is false.


> It does not. For example young women and girls, even when knowing that an image of a fashion model is photoshopped, still exhibit drops in their self body image.

In the natural world traits that are wasted on futile efforts are eventually not selected. In the human world, traits that are ripe for manipulation in a free market would result in lower purchasing power. Thus, less ability to afford children and pass on the traits. Subsidizing via regulations or direct support prolongs the subterfuge we are discussing here. Perhaps, in perpetuity.

> In many cases these two things are the same, due to the prevalence and efficacy of lobbying

The reason there are lobbyist is because we have granted those being lobbied control. Take away the control and the lobbying is pointless. More rules and regulations = more lobbying.


>Subsidizing via regulations or direct support prolongs the subterfuge we are discussing here. Perhaps, in perpetuity.

>Take away the control and the lobbying is pointless.

This social anarcho-darwinism nonsense doesn't refute my point that you are susceptible to influence and coercion.

You cannot "protect" yourself as the previous poster baselessly asserted.


> In the human world, traits that a ripe for manipulation in a free market would result in lower purchasing power. Thus, less ability to afford children and pass on the traits

This is mostly nonsense


Air is mostly nitrogen.

How is it mostly nonsense?


There are a lot of mistakes here, but for one, lower economic means correlates with more children.


Has less purchasing power ever resulted in less children? Would you happen to have a source?


I wanted to observe how great it is to see "ghastmaster" arguing with "stackghost."


I liked that in the article, somebody with the name "Poet" grew up to be an economist.


> I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority, but I can out wit a billboard.

Another way of saying this is that you would rather be controlled through methods which are subtle, novel, and difficult to put a finger on than through methods which are overt and fit traditional narratives of control.


Cops. On the whole, yes.


This is why doctors and other healthcare professionals never become addicted to drugs. Right? They know better?


AMD's decision to back out of the high end cards seems even more logical given this information. High end may be trending too powerful. I used to buy the high end cards, but my next one will not be so. The cost and the power consumption are large factors in that decision. I do not need nor can I afford a super computer for gaming.


Does it really? I keep thinking that they could just slap on 32G of VRAM on a midrange card and they would get roaring enthusiast support. I'm guessing the only reason they don't do that is to not encroach on their more expensive ML cards?


For gaming I would be happy with 16GB card. Enough to survive three or so generations more.


I personally game a bit but I spend more time these days experimenting with deep learning so I would pay a premium for extra VRAM on my home machine.


It seems both Nvidia and Intel are now brute forcing things with more energy consumption and possibly much larger dies. Which is not that great in either power efficiency or costs.

Doing best at 100-150W GPU at top seems most responsible move to me. With reasonable cost for the GPU to boot.


Have you ever considered Geforce Now? It's incredible to use, and all the power consumption is in their data center instead of your home. Right now it's a 4080 but presumably they'll upgrade to 5080s once those are out.

I used to build my own PCs, but GFN is a much nicer (and significantly cheaper!) experience overall. I can play everything on ultra, at 4k (with DLSS) for $20/mo and don't need to worry about keeping up with new GPUs or local heat, noise, and system maintenance. For an aged, busy gamer, it's really really nice.


The load times are pretty terrible and game compatibility is 80-90%. But otherwise I are it’s a good deal. Great for turn based and rpg type games, but very mid for first person. I would recommend it with those reservations. Also I don’t think the high end tier is worth it because of the bandwidth inconsistency in their data centers.


Load times, you mean when you first start a game? Once you're in, everything is fast.

As for bandwidth inconsistencies, what do you mean? In the US northwest and in Chicago at least, I've had the high tier for years and it's been fantastic. Sure it's not your ISP or router? FWIW I've found hardwired ethernet to work a lot better than WIFI.


Yeah first start is such a terrible experience. 2-3 splash screens all taking forever. Compared to modern consoles where you can just suspend and go. Once it gets going it’s a non issue but fists start up is a couple minutes which is aggravating


What games are you playing? I'm guessing FPS don't work so well with latency


I do play shooters from time to time. It's not quite as smooth as a good local GPU, but perfectly playable if you're not competitive. A bit of Destiny 2, The Division 2, Remnant 2, Apex Legends, a bunch of other forgettable extraction shooters, etc. I win some matches but not a lot. At my level, it's my skill (or lack thereof) that's the bottleneck, not GFN lag. If you're trying to go pro, I probably wouldn't consider this good enough. But for casual play it's great.

With 120fps and Reflex on a fast connection, the lag is minimal and lower than what you might find on many consoles with TV lag. Not as crystal smooth as a true high end PC with a fast mouse and 240 Hz monitor, but really not as bad as you'd fear.

Aside from shooters, I play 95% of my games on GFN (along with a handful of unsupported ones using Crossover or Parallels, which both suck compared to GFN). Mostly ARPGs these days (PoE, D4, Last Epoch), some factory games and city builders (Cities Skylines, Frostpunk), and a handful of light sims (Snowrunner).

It's so nice. I could never afford a 4080 or any of their GPUs anymore, but honestly I wouldn't bother even if I could. Not having to manage my own thermals and noise is amazing, as is being able to play on a MacBook, my handheld, my phone, and my TV.


You're referring to The History of Physics. An excellent read for a budding mind.

Asimov was incredibly talented.


I was looking at my parent's bookshelf and saw a book on Shakespeare and I recognized the author's name: Asimov!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimov's_Guide_to_Shakespeare

It's like 800 pages, I haven't read it but I think I'll keep that one. Seems like it might be hard to find another physical copy. He was definitely prolific on a number of topics.


Not surprising!

"Asimov was so prolific and diverse in his writing that his books span all major categories of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for category 100, philosophy and psychology" - from his Wikipedia page.


He was also incredibly talented in phrasing ideas so that they stick in the reader's mind. I am right now sitting next to a dog Asimov named after him.



If he did not know he was in pain, how would universal healthcare have helped?


Regular dental check-ups likely would have caught the tooth rot before it led to opioid addiction. Hopefully in time that a simple filling would suffice, but even a non-urgent extraction or root canal is better than months/years of chronic pain.

From what I can tell, chronic pain eventually morphs into "background noise" in a person's life. It's there, but similar to depression or anxiety, it just becomes a new normal and people develop strategies to deal with it. Often that's drug abuse.


> Regular dental check-ups likely would have caught the tooth rot before it led to opioid addiction. Hopefully in time that a simple filling would suffice, but even a non-urgent extraction or root canal is better than months/years of chronic pain.

Quoting from this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10035485/

...we found that limited information was reported on health outcomes in relation to quality of care within the context of UHC. In addition, there was a global lack of evidence on measures of quality of care related to UHC...

Anecdotally, I have had access to rather cheap healthcare almost my entire life, but opted not to visit a dentist for 15 years.

> From what I can tell, chronic pain eventually morphs into "background noise" in a person's life.

This has been my experience, personally and vicariously.

Edit: I realized the linked paper refers to lack of data on outcomes. That is not really the question here. However, it would be nice to get more data on outcomes. The question here is whether the individual would have visited a dentist without knowing there is an issue. I tried to find data on dental visits in universal healthcare systems vs non and could not find anything.


Brits have better dental health than Americans[1]. Both in measurements of decay, number of lost teeth, and unsurprisingly they visit the dentist more often.

1 - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/british-teeth-arent-tha...


Usually regular dental checkups include x-rays every year.

The biggest value proposition of universal healthcare (IMO) is preventive care, stopping minor issues from getting to the point of hospitalization.


Presumably he knew he had a bad tooth, which was probably why he finally did go to a dentist.


It's worth noting that RDX requires a detonator. This requires more space in the device.


The first thing to come to my mind is water flows down and mold/mildew would be more present in lower floors. Air pollution is a killer.


These aging stories are like a Rorschach test for whatever “science” a person already believes in.


Can you go into more details on what you are trying to point out here? I am not sure what stories you are referring to, nor do I fully understand the rest of your sentence.


People see some stupid anecdote and then share the theory that fits whatever they believe to be true no matter how nonsensical it is.

If I told you the people on the north side of my grandma’s nursing home died before the people who lived on the south side, you’d have some theory about sunlight exposure and excessive mold growth on the north side of the building. Air pollution kills!

But then it turns out the north side is just where they put the sicker people.


I see. You dislike anecdotes and conjecture in general or just in this circumstance?


I don’t dislike them, I think it’s really funny.


There's an inherent risk to hiring someone who has sexualized themselves. False allegations or true allegations are more likely to arise that put the employer in legal jeopardy.

It adds risk that another hire may not have.


In this day and age it won't matter much.

You can hire anyone and have them target of allegations from colleagues. Them having a higher social status won't really help, we're post #metoo and there has been way too many cases of well regarded people being predatory. Whether the employee had some arguable past jobs, you'll have to do due diligence and get to the bottom of it either way.


You say it won't matter much, but it does matter.

1: This is location specific. You should hide it if you ever want a decent job in a smaller town.

2: It is position specific. Many public jobs or jobs in childcare, teaching, or where the company relies on its appearance in the community will not hire someone with a history of sex work in whatever form it takes, and if you hid it to begin but the truth came out you will at best receive backlash for it and at worst be immediately fired (or fired as soon as the paperwork clears).

I have nothing against sex work in any form, but our society as a whole has a strong reaction to it and it will be at least 50 years before we get over that.


"sexualised themselves"

I would say there's a greater risk hiring sanctimonious prudes.


What is the risk you have in mind?


1) Initially 2) Absolutely 3) False. Consumer spending on non durable goods is still rising. Disposable income is still available. Durable goods spending exploded after COVID.

https://wolfstreet.com/2024/08/30/our-drunken-sailors-are-at...


> Disposable income is still available. Durable goods spending exploded after COVID.

Only for some. Household debt is at an all time high, and evictions and utility disconnections are skyrocketing. Homelessness is at record highs. Hunger in the US is soaring too. 18 million households last year struggled at some point to secure enough food, the worst its been in nearly a decade. Many people are suffering under the outrageous prices companies are charging.


> Household debt is at an all time high

That's because people have more money than ever so they're using credit cards more. It's also partly due to inflation. Household debt-to-income ratios are not high.

> evictions and utility disconnections are skyrocketing

I don't believe this is true.

> Hunger in the US is soaring too.

This is true, but it's because the extended child tax credit from 2020 expired - so we can fix it anytime we want.



Just because spending is rising doesn't mean people are buying more things. Prices have increased, so people can be buying fewer goods and still spending more.


Spending on food is rising in real terms (that means counting for inflation), so people are actually buying more food, mostly because they're going to restaurants and using DoorDash more.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFXARX1M020SBEA


https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane202...

> The outlook calls for an 85% chance of an above-normal season, along with a 10% chance for a near-normal season and a 5% chance for a below-normal season. See NOAA definitions of above-, near-, and below-normal seasons. The Atlantic hurricane region includes the North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico.

The updated 2024 outlook calls for a 70% probability for each of the following ranges of activity during the 2024 hurricane season, which officially runs from June 1st through November 30th: 17-25 Named Storms 8-13 Hurricanes 4-7 Major Hurricanes Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) range of 150%-245% of the median


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