Notices by Graydon (graydon@canada.masto.host), page 3

@cstross @quinn Money is only an effective tool to manage your insecurity in a context of good government, and good government cannot use money as an objective.

(Money is an abstraction to facilitate having an accounting system; it's there so you can have units. It's not an expression of natural law, the economy, or effort. It's not even a direct measure of the ratio between effort, lifespan, and outcomes.)

@edmistond @mnl Everybody decided they hated the parse time, if one is being charitable. Everybody decided they hated having to think in trees, if one is being practical. Everybody decided they hated having to follow complex rules when their intent was simple, if one is being unkind.

@clacke If by some chance you can obtain a bound copy of the entire Unicode standard you could thump them with it?

@AdrianRiskin None of which matters when you have to interact with a society able to maintain an army.

Those communities are extinct and they're extinct because in a context of selection, you have to win the fight and you don't entirely get to pick which fight.

@cstross @Sarklor Although in the specific case of Palestine, the British Empire did promise it to two different groups at about the same time.

@clacke Generally speaking, a pharmacist can and will inject you, and the pharmacy is much more conveniently located and may offer walk-in service instead of requiring you to schedule an appointment at the clinic. (Which was always tricky and has got trickier with the accumulating covid consequences.)

@hypolite @clacke https://knifewear.com/products/prince-kogyo-alps-7-santoku-can-opener

https://knifewear.com/products/nogent-super-kim-can-open

Does taking the search out help?

The names are "PRINCE KOGYO ALPS 7 SANTOKU CAN OPENER" and "NOGENT SUPER KIM CAN OPEN" and hopefully there's something enough like a search engine still available for that to work.

@clacke https://knifewear.com/collections/shop?q=can+opener

(I know you're a long way from them, but both are excellent.)

@clacke They did tow her out to sea in 1997 for her 200th anniversary and then sailed her back in. Whether that's technically ocean-going or not I imagine to be a matter of taste.

I find it interesting that the Navy was plain mad for nigh a hundred years about being required to preserve Constitution, and then since the bicentennial in 1976 change occurred. Today the Navy thinks she's holy.

@glaroc @clacke @pezmico Organic solar PV isn't that hard and is coming along nicely. (To the point where it would already do fine, just not as cheaply as the current (really effective!) inorganic solar PV.

Nothing is harmless; nothing is clean. An ecosystem turns shit into food; organisms turn food into shit. The trick with an industrial culture is to set it up as a closed-loop ecosystem. (Vehemently opposed on grounds of incumbent wealth not liking accurate costs.)

@glaroc @clacke @pezmico Compared to the consequences of unconstrained atmospheric carbon dumping?

It's always relative cost; in terms of ecological footprint, nuclear is better than solar PV or wind, never mind fossil carbon.

Nuclear waste really isn't anything more than a cost; there isn't that much of it and it's pretty well understood how to deal with it. (e.g., how it's been dealt with by the Finns.) It's only culturally that it's an implacable eternal curse.

@gehennan boo, sick.

I hope there is a realizable prospect of less sick in the not-too-distant.

@gehennan @clacke Pleased to meet you!

@mansr @clacke @pezmico And here you would appear to make the same mistake those folks are making by using a moral frame of goodness.

Materially measured tangible objectives turn out to work a whole lot better. (Look at how much mammonite rage there is at the US EPA, which exists to reduce pollutants to within measured limits. Versus a willingness to express all kinds of moral statements about carbon footprint.)

@clacke @pezmico Nuclear waste doesn't need to be in gas-tight storage for ten million years; one thousand is excessive. Sequestration is the harder problem.

Amazing how people are far more scared of spent reactor fuel than coal ash, isn't it? And how the "more radioactive" part of the coal ash has no cultural knowledge traction whatsoever.

Fossil carbon companies have spent money like water for generations to create very specific fears of anything that might alter the status quo.

@pezmico "Sequestration" is meaningless if it's not on a geological time scale, many millions of years.

We don't know how to do that and the not-obviously-crazy approaches (pull CO2 from the air, make graphite from the carbon, back fill a coal mine with the graphite) not only have immense energy costs, we'd have to be confident some capitalist wouldn't see it as an opportunity to mine the graphite as high-quality thermal fuel.

So, yeah, scam.

@goatsarah Here's hoping someone figures out how to make rudders taste indescribably bad to orcas.

(Thank you! Appreciate someone throwing some facts into the subject.)