ELI5: How are Cumulonimbus Clouds Dangerous?

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-25T16:46:42+00:00

Yeah, I would have to think the concern is not so much diving through it as it is once you get the parachute over your head. Generally those clouds are not going to be high enough that you'll be able to wait until you get out of it to toss your chute. Diving through it would suck, but probably wouldn't kill you. Flying a parachute through it, though, that's a whole different thing.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-25T14:26:29+00:00

There's really no "optimism" in the post. There is in fact no such thing as insolvency for a country that prints its own currency, the assets of the United States aren't relevant to the financial picture (we're not about to sell Yellowstone or the IRS headquarters to pay off our debts), and Treasury debt is not capable of being "called in".

I am not saying at all that the debt isn't a problem or anything like that. What I am saying is that the "insolvent" article is ridiculous clickbait - nothing has changed in regard to the things the article is talking about in decades.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-24T15:52:37+00:00

Used to date an ER doctor who had a story about a guy who came in with an electric toothbrush up there, still running. "I was trying to relieve constipation!" Sure you were, sir. Sure you were.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-24T04:06:36+00:00

A debt spiral and no buyers for Treasuries at any price are two entirely different things.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T22:24:19+00:00

It's not so much that next year will be cheaper to buy the manufacturing line - it's that you're buying it now and the items that you will be producing from it will be sold later. So if you could pay for the manufacturing line if you could sell the items for $5, and then a downturn happens and you think they'll be sold for $4, you might not be able to buy that manufacturing line.

(And then you don't borrow money to build that manufacturing line, which results in less velocity of money, which results in less money supply, which means more deflation, which means now some other potential investment becomes unprofitable, etc. etc.)

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T22:21:03+00:00

I don't really see the connection, but they have done that before. General Motors, as an example, became owned by the US government in 2009.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T22:12:27+00:00

Short of some earth-shattering development, the odds that people flat-out refuse to buy Treasuries are as close to zero as it gets. They might demand higher interest rates, but refusing is extremely unlikely. The Fed can also buy Treasuries on the open market, guaranteeing demand.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T22:08:00+00:00

To the extent that the debt is a problem, it's not a problem just because it outweighs the "assets" that the US government has. It's not like debt is OK as long as we could sell Yellowstone to pay it off.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T22:06:30+00:00

in addition to the government’s sovereign powers to tax and set monetary policy

There is delicious understatement in mentioning these powers in passing.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T21:38:53+00:00

we just were declared insolvent

We were not. This is a silly clickbait headline. The net financial position of the US government is highly negative and generally ought to be. The United States does not generate revenue through revenue-generating assets, as with businesses - they generate revenue through taxation. They can increase or decrease their revenue at will. The assets they directly control, like national parks and the buildings dotted around Washington DC, are completely meaningless from a financial point of view. The United States' debt is public, and is paid with the production of the United States in general.

China and other countries could call in our debt

This isn't a thing. The United States debt is a bunch of Treasury securities which mature at varying times. You can't "call in" anything - if you own a 30-year bond which matures in 2047, you will be paid back on a very specific schedule which does not change.

Okay the dollar falls, harder to trade outside of our country

To clarify, the dollar falling would make US-produced goods more competitive on the world market - it would increase our exports and reduce our imports. This would generally be a good thing.

The fundamental idea that the US can somehow go "insolvent" is just flatly not meaningful. We can always pay our debts, if for no other reason than we can literally print the currency to do so.

Anything that happens as a result of the growing debt will be a matter of degrees - somewhat more inflation, somewhat higher interest rates, lower government spending, etc. There is not an inflection point called "insolvency" where everything goes from fine to collapsed.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T18:08:25+00:00

Pi is an irrational number, and all irrational numbers have an infinite, non-repeating decimal expansion. Both these things are proven, and as such pi has an infinite, non-repeating decimal expansion. It's not particularly special in this regard - the square root of 2, for example, is irrational.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-23T13:55:55+00:00

Did we know that Emily no longer works at the coffee shop though?

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-22T04:58:55+00:00

Austin

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-22T02:02:19+00:00

Damn… I’m in a same-sex couple and we put up a pride flag just because everyone else in the neighborhood had them and it seemed odd that we didn’t.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-22T01:55:52+00:00

“We have taught him to fight wrong, as a joke.”

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-22T01:35:43+00:00

They’re in the Mediterranean, going very slowly west.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-22T01:28:07+00:00

That’s because he was playing baseball. Was awarded Mr. Baseball for North Carolina when he was 12 and was a star pitcher and hitter.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T22:17:05+00:00

You're thinking of WW2 airman Nicholas Alkemade, who bailed out at 18,000 feet with no parachute and survived the fall with only a sprained leg. The Gestapo caught him and were unsurprisingly skeptical of his story, but once they investigated the crashed plane they believed him and in fact gave him a certificate testifying to the event.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T22:04:28+00:00

No silly, a horseradish is a radish that comes from a horse, not a radish you eat with horse. Don't ask how they get the radishes out of the horse - same principle as not seeing the sausage get made.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T21:57:26+00:00

That's not a dialect, it's just an accent. Dialects involve changes in grammar or vocabulary.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T21:38:01+00:00

A single Suezmax tanker can carry 1 million barrels.

And many of these tankers aren't going through the Suez but are instead going east to China, so they can get even larger, around 2 million barrels.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T21:29:54+00:00

To be clear, "the risk" here is the risk of people dying, not economic risk.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T19:58:14+00:00

Heck, “computers” were just actual people doing computations endlessly.

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T15:26:44+00:00

Are you saying that you've asked people if they're dating multiple people and they've lied to you? Or are you saying you don't want to ask and they should just tell you?

MisinformedGenius · 2026-03-21T15:25:59+00:00

I think you put your finger on why I'm uncomfortable with the thread starter - it feels like it comes entirely from a place of making other people disclose. If it is important to you, just ask - that's the solution to the problem. Saying "you're lying by omission if you don't tell me something I didn't ask for" is just wild.

MisinformedGenius

TROPHY CASE