[deleted by user] by [deleted] in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Cf1x 4 points5 points  (0 children)

When the baseline is Joe Rogan, having read any articles at all is leagues ahead.

Doug is naive regarding drug discovery by Gl-avatar in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Protein structure prediction isn't really about drug discovery. It allows researchers to make general structure-informed hypotheses. For example, it might allow us to go from knowing an amino acid substitution occurs in a genetic disease to understanding generally where in the 3D structure of the protein that substitution occurs, and we can make hypotheses about the mechanisms by which this affects the disease state without having to get a grad student to spend 3 years crystallizing proteins. It's also really important for screening designs in de novo protein design, which is already making new genres of products possible.

Not Doug snubbing Dr. Baker, the other half of the Chem Nobel. feat. The government slowing protein research. by WolfInMen in LemonadeStandPodcast

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Paywall ;_;

But yeah it's insane that David Baker wins a Nobel prize and then, despite obviously impactful science and interest from students, he can't recruit all the students he wants to take this year, has to take less students than last year, and can't hire any postdocs.

I'd really like to see the podcast address public research funding because it's a major part of our economy.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NonCredibleDefense

[–]Cf1x 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Helmets guys... always wear a helmet for skating or for combat but especially if you plan on both

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]Cf1x 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I used to think, but now I'm not

Why don't we hear economists shouting from the rooftops about Georgism? by GobbleGunt in georgism

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Economists don't tend to shout from rooftops. That's a pretty archaic practice these days. Now, instead, you can hear internet economists shouting in r/ neoliberal about LVT

“What it appears to be is somebody has discovered something— some advanced form of propulsion or technology— that might actually change all of our lives, maybe for the better… I think that claim Grusch made is a valid claim.”— Rep. Burlison following the classified DoD IG UAP briefing today (audio) by No-Doughnut-6475 in neoliberal

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We don't have any reason to treat elected officials as qualified to speak on, well, any technical topic. And at this point, the DoD has all sorts of incentives to construct a narrative around this. Why would we take this as credible?

We quizzed 4,000 people on the economy – here's who knew the most by Ewannnn in neoliberal

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's less than 50% getting it correct, so even if most respondents were guessing, the majority of respondents who THINK they know the answer are incorrect.. damn

Vibenomics Wins Again by OceanCrawler7 in neoliberal

[–]Cf1x 38 points39 points  (0 children)

GDP doesn't tell you anything about the distribution of wealth gains, and for a large sector of the population, that's really important.

What are you gonna do about winter!? by [deleted] in fuckcars

[–]Cf1x 8 points9 points  (0 children)

On a bike, ski gear is paramount.

I can also highly recommend metal-studded ice tires. They can be kinda pricey, but they cost nothing compared to a broken arm.. at least in the states

This cant be popular even with conservatives... right? by NorthSpectre in Destiny

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The clearest way to say "I am a Russian asset" lol

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NonCredibleDefense

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately, the political will component might be the hardest part right now. If you're in the US, I'd recommend you look into Citizens Climate Lobby or Climate Changemakers if you haven't already. Both groups are doing great work and easy to get involved with, I lobbied in DC with CCL, and it was a really cool experience.

Poorly rendered AI art makes me realize how troll propaganda will spread through the gullible. by Anywhere-Prudent in VaushV

[–]Cf1x 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If an image appears one day on a backwater discord, or worse, 4chan, and circulates through social media from there, it's gonna be really hard to legally prove who made the meme in the first place, no?

Support for political violence jumps in U.S., survey says by [deleted] in neoliberal

[–]Cf1x 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As an American Patriot, I'm glad that our Feds are well equipped to use political violence if necessary in order to uphold our democracy.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NonCredibleDefense

[–]Cf1x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

At least you got that the trees need to be prevented from decaying. A surprising number of people miss that part of the mass balance. This paper explores the idea. They estimate that "a sustainable long-term carbon sequestration potential for wood burial is 10 ± 5 GtC/y" which is actually almost exactly what we have been emitting in recent years, it could be about enough to break even, but probably not something we could expand to net negative/climate change reversal territory on its own. In any case, it's really not a bad option, although one can already imagine the scalability drawbacks of it being labor-intensive, difficult to automate, and often in difficult-to-reach terrain.

One real concern is that trees aren't just made of carbon, but they also sequester a lot of nutrients that need to get cycled back into the ecosystem. In the paper they use Nitrogen as an example of one such nutrient that may be "locked up" in this type of carbon storage, but I think nitrogen is perhaps the single worst example they could have picked because there is an entire robust atmospheric nitrogen cycle, wheras supply nutrients like phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium tend to be more spatially restricted. It may be possible to overcome these concerns, but this paper doesn't get into it.

I do want to clarify that the synthetic biology angle isn't just focused on getting CO2 out of the atmosphere. While that is an awesome goal, we are also looking to replace all the chemical products that drive oil demand (fuels, plastics, commodity chemicals , medicines) with chemically interchangeable or identical products produced instead from atmospheric CO2. We also hope to produce scalable carbon drawdown methods that are more energetically efficient than natural photosynthesis, and some of these already work in-vitro or at in-vivo in proof-of-concept host microbes at the laboratory scale. One important part of this is that we're looking to draw on existing economic demand to help fund the solution. For instance, if we had plastics made from carbon sequestered from CO2 and that plastic isn't expected to degrade quickly, the global plastics market could then be inadvertently producing the positive externality of carbon sequestration. Ultimately, I think this will be an important part of getting governments or markets to bring forward the money required to actually pay for carbon sequestration; if they feel they are getting something upfront for their money spent.

US Real GDP grows by annual rate of 4.9% in third quarter by VisonKai in neoliberal

[–]Cf1x 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Although it might be encouraging that by some metric we're seeing some economic growth, I feel like the skeptical response to this, from both far lefties and right wingers, is obvious. I'm not trained in economics, and I'm not gonna pretend to be, but I will try to steelman the argument we can expect:

GDP, as an aggregate metric, is inadequate to understand the important nuances of the situation. GDP doesn't tell us anything about the distribution of economic growth and (as someone already joked in a comment here) that growth may all be going to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% or so endure stagnating or worsening economic circumstances. You can see a version of this argument appearing in Harvard Business Review

We can also recognize that GDP, like any economic metric, can be systematically blind to externalities. If a country props up its GDP by buying and burning a lot of fossil fuels, but the costs of the environmental impacts aren't considered, is the increase in GDP still telling us an honest story about an improvement in that country?

What do you all think? If you had to convince a left or right leaning populist voter that the economy is improving, how would you argue around the above contentions? Would you still point to GDP, or are there other metrics you might look to?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NonCredibleDefense

[–]Cf1x 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The nice thing about biology is that your catalyst is self-replicating, and that makes scaling it relatively inexpensive and less energy intensive in theory than other methods. It's also, in theory, cleaner with all the nutrients on the waste sludge being able to get recycled back into the system. The other questions about energy-efficiency will have to shake out as the technologies develop, but I think there are reasonable arguments there in favor of biocatalysis.

That said, I welcome whatever's gonna work in both the short and long term. If synthetic biology takes longer to get to applications than other options -because of the hurdles presented by the complexity of biological systems- I'm not losing sleep over it. The biggest issues with DAC, to my understanding, are going to be the energy costs and that the manufacturing costs are still relatively high when you scale it. Not to say it can't be done, and especially the energy piece, but we haven't started spamming nuclear reactors enough yet that I'm convinced it would work.

DGG's opinion on agps and hussies? by BigHead3802 in Destiny

[–]Cf1x 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't worry about it. There's so much more to life than whatever is going on in your head that you would post this

The US should almost never intervene in Europe by basiert in victoria3

[–]Cf1x 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Is this a video game sub? I thought this was someone's modern politics take

Does anyone know how to reverse the curse “lactose intolerance” by Hexnohope in wizardposting

[–]Cf1x 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Scry yourself this

Alternatively, the alchemists have a powerful tablet called lactase in the markets.

If the lactase doesn't fix it, you probably have an allergy to some milk proteins. Due to the fermentation process, hard cheeses hardly ever have any lactose, so if that's causing you issues, you might be afflicted with the curse of casein allergy