A couple of things about the issue.

Firstly, it's usually explained using insult and hyperbole. That's not a way to get others on your side. There's an old saying "it's not enough to be correct, you also have to be effective". It's usually used on... wait for it... nerds, who are typically very smart but cannot communicate well, and who fall back on insults when they cannot communicate well.

Secondly, for some reason no one wants to debate the issue. The mantra is "the science is settled", which isn't really how science works, but there are STILL gaping logical holes in the entire edifice that no one wants to clear up. Such as: other than rising global temperatures, the theory hasn't made testable predictions of any consequence that have actually come true. For example, in 2005 after Katrina, someone noted that "due to climate change, hurricanes will become stronger and more frequent", and then we had about a decade of no major hurricanes.

Thirdly, and this is the one that really bothers me: even if the science is settled, even if the conclusions are correct, climate change does not indicate what should be done. I've reviewed probably two or three dozen experiments aiming to mitigate the effects over the years, they ALL had the best of intentions, and they've ALL failed, sometimes spectacularly, and always adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than if we had done nothing.

In the meantime, since 2000 when Al Gore brought the issue into the public eye, I've seen the rise of solar panel farms, windmills are everywhere in the midwest, and we've gone from about 2% renewable (year 2000, mostly hydropower, and discounting wood) to about 30% today (also discounting wood). New technology is taken up at an exponential rate, so expect those numbers to rise faster in the near future.

Several technologies have been developed that we're right on the edge of deploying (carbon capture by electrolysis, fusion energy generation, robotic labor (various companies)) or in the middle of deploying (EVs, various companies) that should help enormously.

And finally, the issue has become political. The premier maker of EVs, the one who made EVs that people want to buy, is vilified by the political side that wants you to believe in climate change. A sect of that side wants to replace capitalism with communism, even though the resource utilization of that model is one third to one half of what we have today, and would slow down the innovation and advancement that might help us solve the issue.

But if you're not on board, you're a science denier.

It took 40 years to convince everyone that smoking was bad for us, now we have to endure the people who think they're right and have to insult us because we don't believe them.

Stop badgering us about it, it's not about science it's about economics, and it won't be a problem in a decade or two.

(Note for the observant: This post is rife with observable trends and verifiable facts, so expect the other side to downvote it into oblivion, because that's the way to convince people.)

Trump is the nastiest of vengeful dirty old men. I don't think there's conclusive evidence of pedophilia however, and harping on that takes away from all the shitty and horrible things he has undisputably done.

Sorry about that!

Light bulbs are very small things; the energy that goes into making them is likewise very small, regardless of type. The electricity an incandescent bulb burns is, by contrast, not at all small. You also have to replace the incandescent bulb far more often.

There's all sorts of exhaustive analyses out there, but the TL/DR is:

One incandescent bulb takes ~1-1,5kWh to manufacture and lasts ~1000 hours
One LED bulb takes 8-20kWh to manufacture and lasts ~25000 hours (commonly modern home construction doesn't even use lightbulb sockets anymore; the fixtures are designed to not need "bulb replacements")

So even on manufacturing, the LED bulb wins because it's up against 25 incandescent bulbs. But that's all trivial, because:

60W × 25000h = 1500 kWh
9W * 25000h = 225kWh

So a few extra or fewer kilowatt hours in manufacturing is irrelevant. It's totally dominated by usage energy.

Incandescent only wins one category: disposal (it's just glass and a little metal, you can just throw it in the trash; LED is e-waste and gets recycled). But in both cases, you're talking tenths of a percent of lifetime energy usage.

Lol, a company dominated by Rationalists/Yudowski fans is "far left activists" now ;) The entire premise of HPOMR is that Lily Potter cast a spell to make her sister Petunia more attractive so she could marry a better husband, and when they adopted Harry, instead of having him attend public school, they homeschooled him, so he became brilliant. Very "woke" premise there ;) I don't know if you've heard, but the Rationalist community is the middle of a scandal right now for putting career-limiting pressure on women in the AI space to attend sex parties, including rape-themed ones. All those dang woke feminists, amiright?

It's more like someone standing on public ground outside movie theatre holding up signs like, "Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time!" ""Verbal" Kint makes up his whole testimony on the spot - he's actually Keyser Soze!" "Dr. Mann is a liar, and the "ghost" pushing books off Murphy’s childhood bookshelf is her father, through a time portal from within the black hole!", etc, and then people skip buying a ticket and head back home. Now the plot-spoiler has decided to make it up to the movie theatre by buying some tickets from them.

It seems you went into a friendly, informative, non-disagreeing reply with a view to win a "Being An Argumentative Asshole Online" competition, and congratulations, you won!

Most of the other frontiers are like 1 ELO apart, so yeah, 20 is a big lead.

Maybe in one of the agent categories? It seems poorer there. But under the category "Best Text Models", it's crushingly in the lead.

Dimming them not only directly saves power, but also dramatically increases their longevity, and also increases their efficiency (saving even more power). :)

This "new" site is part of a larger effort by that slob to kneecap or compromise US government Web sites, and steal your personal data.

I first read about the effort here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthedreydossier.substac...

Yesterday, she took a look under the hood of America.gov, and yes, it's as bad as everything else the DOGE vandals have been doing: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthedreydossier.substac...

Up until this point, government Web sites were designed, built, and maintained by the agencies responsible for that government service. For example, if you wanted to apply for or renew your passport, you would go to state.gov, which is run by the US Department of State, which is responsible for processing applications for and issuing passports. No other department has lawful jurisdiction over passports.

From the point of view of the law, that's still true. But the slob, without anyone's permission, kluged together passports.gov. This site was built and is run by the White House's "National Design Studio," completely outside the law and without any independent oversight. The State Department was not consulted and has nothing to do with it. Further, the site is filled with third-party trackers, analytics, and some custom code that copies every page you view, including form contents, to an unknown third party.

Oh, and the guy leading the National Design Studio and in charge of building these fake sites? He's Joe Gebbia -- cofounder of Airbnb. Read both articles for more details.

In short, you should treat America.gov as a malware site and stay well away from it. Under no circumstances should you feed it any of your personal information.

We went through the immigration process under K-1, then adjusted status to a permanent resident. No lawyer. Many people have done this and there is information out there how to do it, but it can be outdated, especially in the current era. There wasn't a great "here's the overall workflow" back when we did it, and their probably isn't now either.

The forms have instructions, and if you read carefully (together with all reference documents) it isn't too difficult. But I'm a contract guy, most people likely will have difficulty. It would be nice for them to have an official place to ask questions and have all the relevant forms and instructions considered together.

For a more "routine" example, the forms to apply for or renew a passport for a minor are a huge pain. Not all the required documents needed to be brought to an appointment (minor passports must be applied for in person) are listed in one list as of late last year. You have to go deeper into the state department website than you probably should have to. They should just fix all forms which are confusing or have incomplete instructions, but having generative AI assist the user is probably a lot faster to implement.

So "not that different" translates to "less than half" by the time you finished the paragraph?

Did you miss the phrase "raw bulb efficiencies", or were you under the impression that streetlamps are raw bulbs and nothing more?

You're talking about PEPC uptake of bicarbonate and CO2 in soil moisture. It's only like 1-2%, and it's not "soil carbon", it's CO2 from the atmosphere dissolved in water. Same uptake whether the soil is humus-rich or bare sand.

How do you plan to handle achieving 1000W/m2 of lighting *before* losses?

I think realistically you'd need orbital mirrors for that.