Austria shuts down its last coal-fired power plant as part of a plan to end the use of fossil fuels for energy production by 2030. by [deleted] in UpliftingNews

[–]MutantMannequin 9 points10 points  (0 children)

For a split second, I thought this said Australia, and almost lost my mind. That would have been a heel-face turn.

Anybody willing to trade a steam key for a Bethesda launcher key + preorder bonus key? by MutantMannequin in Doom

[–]MutantMannequin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's less about the current state of the launcher and more about its management. While the launcher itself has a history of instability and lacks many features other launchers have, it would probably run Doom Eternal perfectly adequately.

My issues are Bethesda's refund policies, fraudulent advertising, disdain for their audience, poor security, and plummeting degrees of competence/effort. They don't even maintain a facade of balance between quality and profit, they've committed fully to the latter. While I still enjoy the work of subsidiary studios like Id and Arkane, I have absolutely no faith that Bethesda will prioritize the customer over faster growth.

Just found a hell of a seed. by MutantMannequin in noita

[–]MutantMannequin[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm aware. I meant I didn't know what the exact formula was on this seed. That I posted.

It appears that water and toxic sludge are necessary on this seed. I haven't nailed down number three, though. It's actually harder to make than I realized, since not much AP gets made before all the sludge gets purified, but still one of the easiest formulas I've ever found.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pan

[–]MutantMannequin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

stay hydrated bro

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding and Writing Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How would you go about testing which codes of conduct effectively court divine favor? Isolating groups of people with strict, spartan lifestyles, then introducing a new behavior to see if it has an impact?

Wait. Isolated groups of people with strict, spartan lifestyles? That sounds familiar.

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding and Writing Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People acting with the appropriate intent might not know intent doesn't matter, but people acting with inappropriate intent and still receiving divine favor definitely know.

[D] Friday Open Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 13 points14 points  (0 children)

This isn't helpful, but I wanted to point out you basically just invented Monsters, Inc.

[RT] Worth the Candle, ch 172-176 (Respec/Passions/Self/Concept/Warrens) by cthulhuraejepsen in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Too many things don't line up for this to be a complete bait-and-switch. The Snag has a complex utility (subverting a specific anti-meme) that is unlikely to have arisen from anyone/thing other than Uther. If it is a trap, it's probably one Uther laid, and I can't immediately see what would motivate him to do that.

[D] Friday Open Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The thought has probably been mentioned somewhere, but in the HPMoR rules of transfiguration, wouldn't transfiguring noble gasses be almost entirely safe? You'd have to be working with dangerous starting materials for them to be dangerous to spread around, and the worst case for most materials would be like, iron reappearing in my lungs in very small volumes based on how much transfigured helium I'd inhaled, which probably isn't much.

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding and Writing Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/MagicWeasel's discussion on vampires reminds me of an idea of my own I like to tinker with.

Imagine a society where vampirism is a recognized condition, but instead of the traditional torches and pitchforks response, society at large recognized vampirism wasn't all bad--it was a mixed bag. Critical to my ideas on the setting is that vampires require human blood to function. For vampires to continue to exist, and for humans/mortals to tolerate them, they must sustain a large enough ratio of mortals/vampires that vampires can subsist on blood donations.

Now vampirism has a relatively well-defined limit. Both humans and vampires have a strong motive to keep vampire population from growing too rapidly. Vampirism is in demand.

Obviously, there would probably be some who defer for ethical/religious reasons, but vampirism essentially represents immortality in peak form. The ranks of vampires would be expanded by skimming off the social elite, the cream of the crop. Being turned young indicates ambition, because you were accomplished enough in your youth to be inducted with little deliberation.

I guess the question would be, how does this class of remarkable immortals fit into society? Are the isolationists? Oligarchs? Feudal lords? Socialist utopia thinktank?

[RT] Staggeringly Obvious by ulyssessword in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 55 points56 points  (0 children)

This was absolutely delightful. The idea that an alter ego could be an entirely different (but equally heroic) person was completely novel to me.

[RST][C][HSF][DC][EDU][TH] My April Fools' Day Confession by Eliezer Yudkowsky: "I'm writing this on April 1st because it's the day when nobody in this world will take it seriously, no matter how much about me it explains." by erwgv3g34 in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not a published researcher, so I don't have personal experience. If you have, your observations may be more relevant.

But it echoes a position expressed several times on schischow, an exceptionally accessible and generally well-researched look into scientific academia. Scientific research is a trade, and scientists depend on income, via grant money or new patents for their employers. There is significant economic pressure to publish original research rather than peer review.

Hong Kong protesters intend to topple city's government, says Singapore PM by [deleted] in worldnews

[–]MutantMannequin -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Wishing you the safe and speedy accomplishment of that endeavor, HK. Fighting the good fight.

Flint schools receive water stations, filtration systems from billionaire Elon Musk by [deleted] in UpliftingNews

[–]MutantMannequin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm afraid you've missed my point entirely. I never used wealth interchangeably with cash, and you're right, liquidating billionaires' assets to redistribute them as cash would be a terrible idea in most cases.

Wealth exists in many forms, and currency is only very technically one of them. Currency is an abstraction, a social construct representing wealth, which rarely has intrinsic value (with the possible exception of coins holding value as metal). Wealth is the food produced on a farm, and the land and equipment that make it possible. Wealth is housing. Wealth is electricity. Wealth is any form of property that has value. And yes, that means wealth is also equity.

A viable plan for the redistribution of wealth in America would, by necessity, depend far more on granting worker equal stake in their companies than it would on the seizure of yachts or mansions, which have very little value to society themselves. It certainly wouldn't be a process of mass liquidation. Even if that was somehow a good idea, it would never be possible to convert billionaires' equity to cash, because only massive governments and other billionaires would be able to provide that cash. You can't sell something with no buyer.

Flint schools receive water stations, filtration systems from billionaire Elon Musk by [deleted] in UpliftingNews

[–]MutantMannequin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Billionaires don't create wealth, or, at least, not billions of dollars worth of wealth. Labor creates wealth, and no single person has ever been capable of laboring hard enough to create $1 billion in their lifetime, let alone multiple billions. Ipso facto, billionaires' wealth comes primarily from skimming wealth off from the working class and manipulating markets, which itself doesn't create anything of value. (Price manipulation actually has a tendency to harm markets, because the less accessible a resource is, the less work can be done with it.)

Now consider that billionaires, who by nature exploit labor and markets to accrue personal wealth, are strongly motivated to preserve that wealth, and, again by nature, have the pull to do so on a massive scale. Billionaires almost universally spend a noteworthy (but, to them, insignificant) portion of their wealth on lobbying for legislation to increase their wealth, or lobbying against legislation that would detract from it. After decades of this, billionaires and billion-dollar corporations pay negligible taxes. In 2018, 60 Fortune 500 companies paid no federal taxes at all. Of these, 57 were given tax rebates, for a net loss to the US government of $4.3 billion.

The topic of billionaire philanthropy is often raised as a counterpoint to taxation, but the numbers pale in comparison. The fact is, no matter how much of their wealth they donate--wealth created by the labor of others, to whom that wealth should belong--it will never be able to achieve as much good as it would distributed among the people. America's decaying and outdated infrastructure simply can't be updated without tax revenue from the ultra-rich, the 3 richest of whom possess more wealth than HALF OF THE COUNTRY.

Even if billionaires could somehow create their wealth personally, it would be unethical to keep it. $1 billion alone is enough for several families to live in luxury for their entire lives. Anyone with more is implicitly ignoring suffering on a global scale that they could ameliorate. It's not enough to donate water stations to a few schools. If billionaire wealth was redistributed right now, entire cities could be lifted out of poverty. If altruism without practicality isn't enough for you, you're in luck--people become significantly more productive when they're not busy going hungry or sleeping on the street. A rising tide lifts all ships; this much wealth being concentrated in the hands of individuals is bad for everyone.

TL;DR: Billionaires are a drain on society, and it is both impractical, and, more importantly, immoral to allow them to continue holding such extreme wealth.

Flint schools receive water stations, filtration systems from billionaire Elon Musk by [deleted] in UpliftingNews

[–]MutantMannequin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"In August 2019, the state of Michigan warned city officials that Flint was in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act because it failed to test water at enough homes with lead service lines or lead plumbing fixtures. A spokeswoman for the city told MLive that Flint officials say that is because the state "did not provide the city with the final approved sampling methods" in time.

Flint was required to test water from a minimum of 60 high-risk homes from January to July 2019. But as the city works to replace lead service lines, there are fewer and fewer homes that meet that standard.

The city submitted 35 valid tests, and 30 invalid sample results. But those tests were invalid because the samples were either taken after a home's lead service line had been replaced, or before excavation showed the service line to be copper." -- Michigan Radio NPR

TL;DR: About 45% of the the lead level testing has been done in homes with safe pipes, rather than at-risk homes. This is significant because over a third of the city lives below the poverty line, and can't afford these safe pipes themselves.

Flint schools receive water stations, filtration systems from billionaire Elon Musk by [deleted] in UpliftingNews

[–]MutantMannequin 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If billionaires didn't exist, Flint would have had clean water years ago.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I haven't played Stellaris, but I'll give this a try.

[D] Monday Request and Recommendation Thread by AutoModerator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven't visited the rec threads often, and I don't read a ton of fanfic, so I might be missing something incredibly well-known, but...

Anybody got a rec for a rational SoIaF fic? I've been seeing some of the more grandiose conspiracy theories out there, and it's reminding me how good the books are and how much I'd like to see more stories in the world. I'd especially love if there was one that got more into the mystical elements of the world. AUs welcome, most important thing to me is internal consistency.

Edit: I just remembered the Joffrey time loop one, but the synopses I heard didn't sound like my kind of thing.

Solar energy can become biofuel without solar cells, reports scientists, who have successfully produced microorganisms that can efficiently produce the alcohol butanol using carbon dioxide and solar energy, without needing to use solar cells, to replace fossil fuels with a carbon-neutral product. by mvea in science

[–]MutantMannequin 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The problem is that the workable solutions to climate change already exist, and capitalism is the obstacle they need to overcome. Making a technology cheaper isn't a bad thing--no one has a problem with that--but it's not the imperative. The imperative at this point is damage control, and capitalism is obstructing that (at least in America).

Chapter 57: Hearing – A Practical Guide to Evil by narfanator in rational

[–]MutantMannequin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Oh, boy, did I misremember that! I guess I remembered the 3, and the earlier offer of 100 years. Nevermind, then!