> This would work if we could run state governments like mini "countries" but there is not enough interest from the electorate and thus very little oversight so they end up in a bad way.
Which is circular; there's less attention because we don't.
> I would like very much for California's state legislature to be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population size & dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure).
About 1/4th the land area of California and much more .. "square". The long line in South Korea is 275 miles long; versus roughly 800 miles for the California HSR system. And California's system is facing a public that's much less accustomed to and receptive to rail, and endpoints that basically require you to have a car anyways.
We should have spent all this money on making local rail awesome. It'd make a much bigger difference in day to day life, would pay off quicker, and would prepare the ground for doing HSR.
> So if they had left that line in, everything would be cool?
It certainly would be better.
Forks tend not to have -perfect- relationships and tend to cause a bit of mutual annoyance. But attribution is important-- it's the most basic step.
When this maintainer is asked how the projects are related, it'd sure be nice if both projects are telling the same story, instead of one illegally lying about it.
The weight limit is 70 pounds = 31.8 kg. Lead is 11.35 g/cm^3.
Small flat rate box, 21.9 x 13.7 x 4.12 cm = 1236 cm^3 = 14kg; you can fill 100% with lead and mail it. Tungsten is also allegedly fine, but it will weigh 23 kilos and be quite difficult to pick up (can't get a finger under an edge...)
Medium flat rate box = 95kg; you can fill it 33% with lead, or ~45% with steel and mail it.
Considering the expense of synthesizing meitnerium and the half-life which is measured in seconds, I would recommend getting insurance as well as express shipping if you do try.
Less than a second for all known isotopes I can find [0] So by the time you get to the post office it's under the weight limit (and you and everyone nearby are dead from the massive radiation dose probably)
The problem is I missed it wasn't ms like the rest of them. Still stands though you'll lose too much density by the time it's weighed even assuming you could mass create the Mt all at once.
If you've got a particularly slothful postal worker you might consider topping up your meitnerium with a similarly sized sample of roentgenium-282. If you don't have any to hand then perhaps you'll have better luck producing tennessine-294 and waiting a couple of minutes. Amusingly your trip from Tennessee to x-ray land will take you via Moscow and Japan.
(Beware that you might end up making the box bulge a bit, since you'll necessarily go over the size limit by including less dense materials as well as necessary apparatus.)
I'm not sure buying the super fancy handbag is primarily about showing off, either, and I think people who consume a lot of these goods have a lot of brand knowledge.
I mean, I think you're right in that watch nerds usually have more domain knowledge, but I don't think it's inherently dissimilar.
Real perspective shift from your comment, thanks! Reading more about usage of those terms now, but I still can't help but feel there's a deliberate "fancypants nonstandard language" signalling going on in the marketing of these "timepieces".
There's an easy parallel to make with the audiophile industry, which uses all kinds of colourful but ultimately vacuous language.
> You’re reverting to your priors despite evidence to the contrary.
Eh, I don't think what he's saying now is unreasonable.
Certainly no one feels a pressure to use a modern term that might have less perceived value-- to say "functions" or "features" instead of "complications."
A big part of the product of a fancy watch, or a bespoke suit, is the traditions. When tradition or sounding fancy is opposed to accessibility, the former will win.
> no one feels a pressure to use a modern term that might have less perceived value-- to say "functions" or "features" instead of "complications
Methods in OOP. Every term in functional programming. Rolex does a little bit of the Apple game, renaming jargon. But the watch industry mostly uses the term the first person to use it deployed. (“Complications” makes more sense than “features” when working multilingual across French, German and Italian.)
I’d also argue that “features” is a bit misleading. Complications aren’t about utility. They’re about art. It’s intentionally overcomplicating something.
> Complications aren’t about utility. They’re about art. It’s intentionally overcomplicating something.
This is not the original usage; "complication" does not imply "grande complication."
> ..."features"...
None of your criticism applies to "functions" which is the first term used.
> Methods in OOP. Every term in functional programming.
Yes... I'm saying in a niche, luxury industry based upon exclusivity and tradition, the marketing pushes towards old, foreign, and exotic language. All these things in commodity digital watches are "modules" and "functions" instead of "calibre" and "complications." (With Apple, on the high end, choosing "complication" for some reason ;).
Indeed, RFC977 (1986) quotes a 1985 message from someone on unitek (a uucp node) requesting a reply by email (while the word "mail" was more often used before this):
I can't exactly recall if we called it "e-mail" at the time or "mail". I do recall emailing in probably 1985; I recall distinctly setting up a cute multi-line graphic "you have mail" shell notifier when I was primarily dialing in on an HP-110 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_110 ) with the 16 line display, it was a loaner because the 24 line Plus model was out in 1985 and everyone wanted that one.
It was a lot of bang paths, where you'd list your e-mail address from a pretty well known location, like "hpfcla!hpilsb!linsomniac" and the sender would have to know or use trial and error to say "I bet ihnp4 can reach hpfcla.
You know those viral videos of kids tossing a ball the hits a pot that bounces over to a pan that bounces to another pot then to a kettle then into a cup? That's what sending e-mail was like back then. At least via UUCP.
<<It was a lot of bang paths, where you'd list your e-mail address from a pretty well known location, like "hpfcla!hpilsb!linsomniac" and the sender would have to know or use trial and error to say "I bet ihnp4 can reach hpfcla.>>
I remember that my brother at Bell Labs had an address with bangs. He was working on System V stream drivers. For me, actual "email" started when we had DNS routing ad could email --or talk to-- user@shost.university.edu ... before I don't actually recall how I exchanged emails with my brother at Bell Labs. It's that period of time that I'm trying to reconstruct, around 1987 early 1988, when I immigrated to the U.S. (from UK... now back in UK as of last year)
It seems like combat SAR in the maritime environment is what these are best at.
> The "Viceroy" craft that Regent has mocked up on their website claims 180 mile range, 3500lb of cargo / 2 crew + 12 passengers.
This is like 1/4th the size needed for minimum scale sustainment and support. Not to say that it won't be used for that in a pinch or for special operations, but it's pretty limited. Of course, there's been talk about building huge ones.
The company press release states "The second phase of work will examine seaglider capabilities across missions including contested logistics and medevac/casevac".
I agree that this would be useful for medevac/casevac, but I'm less sure about the search part of SAR. 180 miles is not a lot of range for searching.
I still believe this is primarily about contested logistics, because the USMC still hasn't solved that issue. One of the stand in force concept's biggest weakness right now is how will the marines go about sustaining the force. There's a lot of good ideas written down, but concretely they still don't have good solutions.
I think it's fairly clear that the Marines will look to unnamed undersea vehicles as one vector, but I think they're looking for flexibility and redundancy (and certainly the speed that these guys offer would be interesting).
What's written about SIFs is that the Marines anticipate the majority of SIFs to be deployed in the crisis building phase. They do not envision on day one of a shooting war, somehow dispersing all of their forces across the first island chain - they take for granted that they will somehow do that in the build up. After that, then ya, maybe just med/casevac and resupply is what they're after.
I have a hard time finding concrete examples, but I always envisioned an example detachment being roughly platoon sized. Basically, imagine being able to man a NMESIS launcher or two, ISR, and a squad or two of infantry for security. I think at that point, these vehicles become more viable for certain types of sustainment. You could for example priority rush more NSMs to a detachment.
> I think at that point, these vehicles become more viable for certain types of sustainment. You could for example priority rush more NSMs to a detachment.
Sure-- like 3 per trip. If they're not too long for the vehicle (they might be).
You might be able to barely sustain a platoon-sized force with a trip per day, but this seems very marginal.
> I have a hard time finding concrete examples, but I always envisioned an example detachment being roughly platoon sized. Basically, imagine being able to man a NMESIS launcher or two, ISR, and a squad or two of infantry for security.
Most of the scenarios I've participated in have involved reinforced companies.
The article never mentioned the search part of SAR, only the rescue part. The range is still something of an issue with that, though, as you'd need to be fairly close the people needing rescuing. So I still agree that contested rescue is likely a side mission for this.
> It is IMO both very reasonable to fund more research into this to know conclusively if 0.7mg/L is indeed safe
How exactly do you propose we do this? It's tough to prove absence of harm.
The meta-analysis put together tons of research under different situations, and found a weak and relatively small dose-response relationship above 1.0 mg/L and failed to find a relationship below. The evidence between 1.0mg/L and 1.5mg/L is particularly weak. And, of course, most dose-response curves are sigmoidal, so the failure to find a response under 1.0 mg/L is most easily explained by the inflection point being above that level.
If you're not satisfied when combining 74 studies fails to find a relationship, will you be happy with 75? 76? 100?
(Sure, a big proportion of the studies and study power focused on higher levels of fluorination-- and I always support filling gaps in research; but it's not like we have an absence of research below 1.5 mg/L).
The Cochrane Collaboration's research is near the gold standard, and yet they find surprisingly limited evidence of benefit for CWF in the modern research:
"These low‐certainty findings (a 4 percentage point difference and 3 percentage point difference for primary and permanent dentition, respectively) favoured CWF."
3-4% reduction in cavities is not nothing, but it's a far cry from the 60% drop observed in the 1940s and certainly much less than what I think most strong proponents of water fluoridation would have you believe. The ongoing discussion I find quite legitimate given we're no longer living in the 1940s and CWF seems to have a substantially lower benefit than it once did, and likewise we do notice a concerning trend with fluorine neurotoxicity that has only emerged in the last few decades of research.
Public health policy is all about a risk/benefit analysis, and CWF is one of those topics that I feel legitimately should be discussed because much has changed over the many decades since the US first introduced it and since then the risks seemingly have gone up and the benefit has astronomically gone down.
Again, I do not think there'd be much discussion if current water fluorination was at 0.15mg/L, and we started seeing a negative trend at 1.5mg/L. But I don't think its actually at all unreasonable for public health officials to be worried and possibly start considering alternatives to CWF out of an abundance of caution.
> but it's not like we have an absence of research below 1.5 mg/L).
But it is?
>> "It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ"
Yes you would need a higher powered study to rule out the potentially smaller effect, but when your treatment can affect tens of millions of children, it doesn't seem crazy to ask for more funding.
> > but it's not like we have an absence of research below 1.5 mg/L).
> But it is?
But it isn't. There's 7 studies included in that meta-analysis looking at levels below 1.5mg/L, covering 2832 children. The effect measured so far across all of the studies is a statistically insignificant increase in IQ.
I'm in favor of additional research; I just don't think getting to n=10,000 showing little or no effect is going to convince anyone. I also don't think that these possible modest effects are going to be in the top 5 most important environmental stressors to measure the effects of.
I agree, the effects of fluoride probably aren't in the top 5 things to be concerned about (although perhaps they are from a political perspective, with it becoming such a strong topic of debate for a variety of reasons). But do you assume that getting to n=10,000 is going to show little or no effect (e.g. having a level you define as little effect)? I'm not convinced the NTP data is extremely high quality and can't make much conclusion from it on the effects.
Also, for other commenters: the 2832 children number I believe comes from the supplemental content from the supplemental material for the NTP Fluoride Monograph: https://cdn.jamanetwork.com/ama/content_public/journal/peds/... (this url is very long because of some hashing measure, sorry: if it is no longer accessible, it is the supplemental content for doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.5542), on page 51 of the PDF. I have a small summary table of data I view relevant here:
The columns are:
* Studies used; Fluoride Exposure; Number of Studies / Number of Observations (number of Children)
* Estimate for slope in linear Model, given as increase in IQ points per mg/L increase (95% CI) (p value)
> But do you assume that getting to n=10,000 is going to show little or no effect (e.g. having a level you define as little effect)?
I don't necessarily assume this, but even if you assume linearity, 0.7 * -0.32 is pretty dang small at baseline. I think if you generate n=10000 showing MLE=-.32 or +.05, few people are going to change their minds. I might, but I don't think it does much to shape the debate.
Which is circular; there's less attention because we don't.
> I would like very much for California's state legislature to be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population size & dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure).
About 1/4th the land area of California and much more .. "square". The long line in South Korea is 275 miles long; versus roughly 800 miles for the California HSR system. And California's system is facing a public that's much less accustomed to and receptive to rail, and endpoints that basically require you to have a car anyways.
We should have spent all this money on making local rail awesome. It'd make a much bigger difference in day to day life, would pay off quicker, and would prepare the ground for doing HSR.
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