BF2S Forums D&ST - Science

I refuse to use the Delta, Echo, whatever terminology for these COVID strains. I know there was an issue of people using country named variants to promote racism but I don't feel like having to Google where a variant is predominant because we gave them an euphemism.

I'm all for it. Assigning a country adjective isn't always helpful, or even accurate.

e: Spain did some gnarly stuff in history, but did they really deserve a flu named after them when it was first found in Kansas?

it really doesn’t. where a variant was first detected does not really have much bearing on a fast-changing global epidemiological crisis.

This classification makes it easier to keep track of and categorise virus mutations. I suppose it will be standardised in the future as an addition to the scientific designations.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

'The India Variant is now in Western Europe' explains more info than "The Delta Variant is now in Western Europe'.

Just wait for the Paki variant

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14 … elding-rod

v good stuff on green energy industry.

The CS Wind story is one of politicians and electorates in wealthy countries trying to reconcile the irreconcilable goals of cheap green energy, free trade and secure, well-paid green energy jobs for their own workers. There’s something more unsettling involved too: an inspiring, utopian, internationalist movement to save humanity from climate emergency comes across a once inspiring, once utopian, once internationalist movement to save humanity from capitalist exploitation, and walks on by.

worth the read.

yes it does. i think the proximity of capitalist critique with green energy is what makes it a particularly good take. if any industry should think about overhauling the global labour market, or raising the possibility of vertical state-led investment and infrastructure, then the green revolution is it.

An issue with wind turbines is they use Sulphur Hexafluoride in the protection breakers, which could easily undo all the benefits.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, SF6 is the most potent greenhouse gas that has been evaluated, with a global warming potential of 23,900 times that of CO2 when compared over a 100-year period.

There's no joined up thinking anywhere.

But won't it be great having a huge population and everyone living on termite larvae as they lie in an induced coma for fear of creating excess CO2 by moving or thinking.

The real problem is population growth.

But yeah, the idea we can solve it with reusable straws and knitting our own shopping bags is laughable.

I'm sure I've said it before, a family friend thought she was saving the planet by making a 100 mile round trip in her Range Rover to buy a box of organic eggs.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-07-12 04:52:39)

If we want a reasonable quality of life we need to limit the population to within the capacity of the planet to sustain.

Even if we build a Dyson sphere it will reach its limit at some point, and won't matter as the water table will be long exhausted and the termites will have tired of delivering their young.

All the future wars will be about resources, we could avoid all of them.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-07-12 05:09:12)

Dilbert_X wrote:

I'm sure I've said it before, a family friend thought she was saving the planet by making a 100 mile round trip in her Range Rover to buy a box of organic eggs.

That sounds fairly GG/early boomer. I knew people that would cross the state just to buy Seattle bread.

I go off of cornucopia.org's scorecards (https://www.cornucopia.org/scorecard/eggs/) and summaries. It's probably nicer to buy eggs from a farmer that doesn't pack hens into cages like sardines, melt their beaks off, drop-kick animals, or boil live, bleeding chickens to remove their feathers.

You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that goes on at some "organic" farms.

re: population, it would be nice if certain churches stopped preaching against contraceptives. but it would also be nice if certain countries stopped polluting and emitting unnecessary quantities of garbo into the oceans and atmosphere.

nobody in the UK cares about channel island milk. do you know how far the channel islands are from your average brit?

devon and the west country makes great enough dairy.

re: banana throwing, all football fan groups are endemically racist. that's because it's a proletarian sport for lower-class pigmen. this whole idea that britain is unique for racist fans is funny. you do know that italy has domestic football clubs which are basically fascist bastions? you do know that football fandom and fan 'units' overlap with neo-nazis in most of central and eastern europe, right?

the whole political reading of football this last tournament was nothing short of funny. typical liberal commentariat nonsense.

if a few baseball players took a knee and wore a rainbow armband, would it fix the unreconstructed views of every baseball fan?

Last edited by uziq (2021-07-12 17:04:54)