comicjk

9 ms·

61.
by comicjk 4y ago
> If you go fossil fuel, you have only 40% efficiency for Fossil Fuel -> Electricity, This is a big underestimate for natural gas now that we mostly use combined-cycle gas plants (basically a jet turbine bolted to the ground, with its
62.
by comicjk 4y ago
In my analogy, parents = banks and school = bank loan recipients (the federal government, if the bank has bought government bonds). The money isn't missing when it's loaned out by the bank; the bank knows when it will get it back,
63.
by comicjk 4y ago
This is not what "missing" means, or else every parent at work with kids at school would have a missing child (after all, they don't have the kids right now ). The banks have loaned out the money, but they do keep track of w
64.
by comicjk 4y ago
How would you get people to trust you to do this and make a solution that they can maintain in the long term? It's hard for me to envision an organization accepting this offer.
65.
by comicjk 4y ago
The smart money is on black.
66.
by comicjk 4y ago
Molnupiravir is special in that it works by making viral replication more error-prone, with so many mutations that the virus cannot reproduce at all. If a virus manages to replicate anyway, it may do so with more mutations than normal, and
67.
by comicjk 4y ago
I've seen this gesture called the "scholar's cradle" and associated with lecturing professors.
68.
by comicjk 4y ago
These old units are common in engineering applications across North America, the US especially. When I was in chemical engineering school, we had to be effectively bilingual in terms of units. We even used some bizarre units like the lb-mol
69.
by comicjk 4y ago
My understanding is that the standard model likely does predict static electricity, but since it's a phenomenon bigger than a few molecules, we have no way to actually run the simulation. The physics is willing but the computers are we
70.
by comicjk 4y ago
Fluorine forms the strongest bonds to carbon that are available (much stronger than a carbon-carbon or carbon-hydrogen bond, also stronger than carbon-chlorine). It acts like an immovable stub preventing further reactions, which is great fo
71.
by comicjk 4y ago
A simulator like this would require a lot of simplifications: a table of template chemical reactions and thermochemical mixing rules which are bound to be wrong in edge cases. It doesn't take many reagents before you hit a combinatoria
72.
by comicjk 4y ago
Only if you have something nearby that needs low-grade heat, like warming buildings. Waste heat is a diffuse source of energy that's not worth the infrastructure cost of transporting more than a few miles.
73.
by comicjk 4y ago
Too expensive, too easily degraded by minor impurities in the fuel, not improving nearly as fast as batteries (their main competition). Using rare materials more efficiently would definitely help with the cost problem.
74.
by comicjk 4y ago
Another failed miner who is rather well known: Mark Twain. His comic memoir about trying to get rich as a young man in the Nevada and California mines is called "Roughing It."
75.
by comicjk 4y ago
As long as the design team has the discipline to freeze the button layout for any given car, so the driver doesn't have to deal with moving or disappearing buttons.
76.
by comicjk 4y ago
All of the loops and swirls are summary representations of known atomic positions: really, knowing a protein structure means knowing the position of every atomic nucleus, relative to the nuclei, down to some small resolution, and assuming a
77.
by comicjk 4y ago
Probably Amazon is afraid of being replaced by AliExpress, which has lots of these sellers and their low prices.
78.
by comicjk 4y ago
At least according to Paul Graham's old essay about it, it's everywhere: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
79.
by comicjk 4y ago
I thought so too, but Wiki says fertilizer was in fact the main usage. I suppose you get many extra units of grain per unit of added guano. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano "As a manure, guano is a highly effec
80.
by comicjk 4y ago
It's not permanent, but it probably will happen again. Gas prices are volatile.
81.
by comicjk 4y ago
Within living memory, Americans wore hats pretty much whenever they were outside. If we decide to give up sunblock, we might want to reconsider the change in fashions that got rid of them.
82.
by comicjk 4y ago
Couldn't you use the bleaching effect of UV to estimate exposure? It doesn't have to be an electronic UV sensor, just a spot of calibrated UV-sensitive dye.
83.
by comicjk 5y ago
Reuters agrees (it's not just on Twitter). https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-approves-bill-tha...
84.
by comicjk 5y ago
The reason it's "like printing money" to build an apartment building is that there are so few relative to demand. You're using the result of a shortage as an argument not to fix the shortage.
85.
by comicjk 5y ago
There is a difference if new technology can be introduced, which is what happened last time. Conventional oil production peaked in 2006.
86.
by comicjk 5y ago
Something like that, sure. Apart from the question of whether the joke is good or bad, I think it's pretty clear from the reactions here that it has a political valence.
87.
by comicjk 5y ago
It's not liberal vs conservative in a policy sense, but in a cultural sense, much more important for signaling. I think many liberals (I include myself) would say it's racially tinged to joke that a doctor and a drug dealer must b
88.
by comicjk 5y ago
I agree. I wonder, though - the author has written a lot about political signaling and trust. I wouldn't put it past him to add a joke that's deliberately anathema to liberals, in order to relax the hackles of the conservatives he
89.
by comicjk 5y ago
Cars misjudging the speed of oncoming bicycles is a huge problem, even without pedal assist. I have added significant length to my bike commute to avoid places where cars turn across my path. I can take a 1% risk once in a while, but not tw
90.
by comicjk 5y ago
This is a placebo-controlled trial. The statistical comparison shown (85% fewer hospitalizations & deaths in the treatment group) already takes into account the non-hospitalized cases in the control group.

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