That's not how evolution works.

Yes, life can adapt to higher temperatures, but as the article shows it's not instantaneous as the populations are crashing.

But the problem is the whole point of climate change is the climate won't stop changing. Even if they adapt to the current increase it will take time to do that, and for the populations to recover. But before that happens we'll be looking at another degree and the populations will crash again.

The longer the temperatures keep increasing the more the populations will decline and closer we get to the point of whole ecosystems collapsing.

I always figured a big part of that was expanded use of agricultural pesticides. The thing that gets me with this story is it's inside the nature preserves, so the answer isn't local pesticide use, it's something much larger.

Which does feel weirdly foreboding. I don't think most bugs have a particularly large range. Give them enough local plant life and they should thrive.

And the nature preserves should be pretty free of pesticides, meaning something else, like climate change, is causing the issues.

Where are you getting this from?

The support for reunification is 12%, not 40%. And there's no more "independent provinces" in China, you think the Taiwanese haven't noticed what happened to Hong Kong?

And China would not see it as "randomly invading a country", it would be retaking a rebel Chinese province. And China has been prepping to retake Taiwan for years, they even built a replica of the neighbourhood around Taiwan's Presidential palace to train their troops.

That's kind of my point. If China knew for sure that the US wouldn't intervene they'd invade Taiwan tomorrow. And if China launched a surprise invasion and conquered Taiwan in hours the US wants the option of backing down without a major loss of face.

So strategic ambiguity (plus the US doesn't want to formally ally with what China considers a rebel province) is the policy.

But if China invades Trump might still react, and that might escalate. So his non-backing of Ukraine makes the situation with China very dangerous.

Ukraine was a friendly nation moving closer to the west (and the US in particular). Not a formal ally, but it had formal interactions with NATO.

I don't think Taiwan is much different. They cooperate, but there's no formal obligation for the US to defend them and the official policy is ambiguity.

And this is one of those cases where I think the "simpleminded" analysis is the right one. Even dictators need to justify their actions to their populace, meaning international politics can be very low bandwidth. The rule "no wars of conquest" was a very simple and effective one. In Russia's eyes this got sullied by the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia. And more likely by the US invasion of Iraq.

If Bush doesn't go into Iraq, and if he played the NATO expansion into Eastern Europe better, I'm not sure Georgia or Ukraine get invaded.

As to Taiwan, again, simplemindedness wins. How far the US goes to defend Taiwan depends heavily on political expectations. And if Ukraine demonstrates that the US has low resolve for defending a friendly nation then China will be encouraged to act, and that expectation of low resolve makes it harder for the US to sustain a defence of Taiwan.

That's why Biden ignored "strategic ambiguity" and said the US would defend Taiwan in 2022. To discourage the Chinese from deciding to invade during the distraction of Ukraine.

Giving a Nuclear armed nation an open pass to invade neighbours and launch wars of conquest inevitably leads to escalation. And that leads to Nuclear war.

The best way prevent Nuclear war is to arm and support Ukraine until Russia with draws, ideally back to the 2014 borders.

The best way to cause Nuclear war? Cut off Ukraine, let Russia take the whole lot. Then China realizes the US's resolve in particular is weak, so they take the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invade Taiwan. And that's your shortest path to Nuclear war.

So 347.59 nautical miles (wtf?!?) or 2.08620849876e-11 parsecs.

I didn't believe it either, but for less conspiratorial reasons.

90% of the hype came from the media, but a bit from the researchers as well.

But they did it for the same reason everyone else got excited. They're nerds who became astronomers because they're interested in thinks like life in space and it would be super cool if it's true.

The claim they These researchers are always so quick to make these announcements in an attempt to justify or procure more government funds doesn't make sense. The results getting debunked puts egg on their face, it makes new funding harder to get, not easier.

Getting buzzed with a group of friends is really fun, getting drunk doesn't add much and mostly sucks afterwards.

The tricky thing is with ritualized social events. For instance, after a curling game we usually head up to the bar and someone buys a round. A couple years ago I had a teammate who decided to stop drinking (don't think he had a problem, but it sounded like some family members did). We were supportive, but it's always slightly awkward when he has a pop and the rest of us a beer, nor did it feel fair when it was his turn to buy.

I think Francis is going in the wrong direction.

I agree the wet market was likely the cross over, and getting rid of them greatly diminishes the risks. But what the conspiracy theorists really want is a patient zero. You don't get that with a wet market, but with a lab leak you can go through the list of lab workers and find the one guy who was sloppy and went home sick.

I'm not even sure it's that thought out. Sure, there's an idea that it makes China more culpable (they were irresponsibly playing with dangerous stuff), but I really think it gets to the core of conspiracy theories.

A global pandemic resulting from a crossover event in the wild (or a food market). What do you do with that? There's no one to really blame, no way to know the full story (where the first crossover happened), and there's no real way to prevent it either. It's just a thing that happened and might happen again with no real way to stop it.

But a global pandemic breaking out of a shoddy Chinese lab? You've got a villain (Chinese government), a clear narrative (it broke out of their lab), and a way to prevent it in the future (come down hard on the Chinese and other countries with sloppy labs).

In so many ways the lab leak is comforting because it's a complete story we can do something about.

Eh, I don't care about the battery changes, or even the self-navigation (not sure about self-righting). It's more the robot's durability and reliability. 21.1km is a long distance, if you haven't mastered the task of walking you aren't going to make it.

Only amateurs only address tooth decay from the outside.

A pro goes after it from inside the body as well.

I have no doubt the numbers are real, and that she's uncovered multiple incidences of products with dangerously high levels of lead.

But advocates like that tend to hyper-focus on their issue and tend to insist on perfect outcomes instead of sufficient outcomes.

I agree those lead numbers look concerning, but I'd like to hear from qualified researchers who haven't built their identity around getting lead out of stuff.