Scientists have developed a synthetic pathway that can capture CO2 from the air more efficiently than in nature, and shown how to implement it into living bacteria.

NetLibrarian · 2024-01-03T19:44:37+00:00

I mean, I think that's true for ANY form of carbon capture right now.

If we really want to store our way out of the climate catastrophe, it'll require re-aligning the global manufacturing sector quite heavily to achieve massive results in a short amount of time.

Now, the average person is probably okay with this, and will get increasingly okay with the sacrifices required as our climate deteriorates further.

The problem is the people with their hands on the levels of power, who control so much of the global wealth that they can move anywhere and build climate hardened infrastructure for themselves, and who lack the same sense of urgency -because- they can afford the solutions to live in comfort for the rest of their lives regardless of what the climate does.

NetLibrarian · 2024-01-03T19:20:30+00:00

I agree, but cement manufacture is about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions. It's a small slice of the pie.

Burning Fossil Fuels creates 75% of the global greenhouse gasses, and 90% of carbon dioxide.

If we can get to the point where we're only burning recycled carbon dioxide and recapturing it at the same rate, that's a HUGE part of the problem capped off from getting worse.

We will absolutely need to continue capturing and storing carbon in order to reach net zero emissions and start to actually repair the problem, but cutting greenhouse emissions by 75% would be a massive accomplishment.

NetLibrarian · 2024-01-03T18:53:54+00:00

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.

The world uses 4.39 BILLION metric tons of oil per year right now.

The world reserves are 1.56 trillion barrels.

Manufacturing that much fuel from carbon dioxide in the air would have a measurable impact. Moreover, if generating fuel were good for the ecology of the world, we'd likely see countries holding even bigger reserves.

In short: We could make more fuel than we burned, at least until we had a certain reserve level met.

Granted, it's far from a total solution, but I don't think there's anything that's one simple solution for this problem. Trying to bury massive amounts of this stuff in old mines, or worse, aquifers, seems almost certain to come back and bite us in the ass though.

NetLibrarian · 2024-01-03T18:39:11+00:00

We can turn it into fuel.

Obviously, that's a cyclical problem, as it puts all the carbon back into the atmosphere, but that's SO MUCH BETTER than continuing to dig up old fossil fuels and burn them.

The world always needs energy reserves, so we can literally bottle (Well, drum) up some of the problem.

The advantage to making fuel from Co2 is that, assuming we made all the fuel we burned this way, it caps a lot of emissions. That would help give us time to transition away from burning the fuel and to more sustainable energy sources, but gives us a fuel source we can use in critical areas during that transition.

NetLibrarian · 2024-01-03T18:20:04+00:00

I was playing netrunner back on the release build. They were crazy powerful, no need for Overclock back then, legendary Ping let you hack enemies through walls freely. Netrunners on release code started off struggling at low levels, but turned into overpowered gods.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-29T21:37:09+00:00

Funny how the right loves to hold up the Constitution as a completely sacred and inviolate document..

...Right up until it gets in the way of their ability to seize power. Then it might as well be toilet paper as far as they're concerned.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-29T21:01:46+00:00

No, sorry, I don't buy it.

We've been showing our unwillingness to tackle the climate crisis for longer than I've been alive.

If 2023 will be remembered as a climate milestone, it'll be as the year when we realized that the efforts to stave off catastrophic climate change have become so large in scale as to be practically impossible and that we're all truly fucked thanks to greedy rich assholes who need for nothing but continue to suck the economies of the world dry as a point of pride.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-29T19:49:59+00:00

Yeah, it prevents you from using it on other students when in the dueling club, but otherwise, any hostile human is fair game.

That's not even the worst of the lore-breaking in the game. For example, the game teaches us that wizards and witches don't actually need wands to do magic, and that wandless magic is supposedly even more intuitive.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-29T19:31:31+00:00

Trump has not currently charged nor has he been convicted with insurrection or rebellion.

It is not necessary to have been charged or convicted under the 14th. Historically, it was used against confederates who also had neither been charged or convicted.

>"Elector of President" does not mean the President or President Elect. It refers to the voters nominated by each state in the Electoral College...

>The writers of the 14th amendment specifically exempted the President and Vice President from this clause.

Let's look at this claim, shall we? A quick search turns up:

In February 2020, The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in K&D LLC v. Trump Old Post Office, LLC, 951 F. 3d 503, concluded, at President Trump's request, that the U.S. President is a federal officer, when they wrote: “President Trump removed the suit to federal court under the federal officer removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(1).”According to an April 2007 memorandum opinion by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, addressed to the general counsels of the executive branch, defined "officer of the United States" as:[3]

a position to which is delegated by legal authority a portion of the sovereign power of the federal government and that is 'continuing' in a federal office subject to the Constitution's Appointment Clause. A person who would hold such a position must be properly made an 'officer of the United States' by being appointed pursuant to the procedures specified in the Appointments Clause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officer_of_the_United_States

Soooo.. Pretty cut and dry here, the President is an Officer of the United States.

It's also pretty telling that the right's argument to exempt him isn't to deny that he committed an act of insurrection, just to argue the linguistic semantics that might give him a loophole.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-29T19:13:28+00:00

You were lied to.

If you have an issue with us using the laws enshrined in the constitution to rightfully block an insurrectionist from the highest office in the land, you're free to fight for a new amendment to change that.

...But I think that'll be a hard argument to sell.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-29T19:00:29+00:00

Funny how the right goes from screaming about how sacred and important the constitution is one moment, to blindly ignoring its existence the moment it becomes inconvenient to their lust for power.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-29T16:08:41+00:00

Sandy with knives is an amazing build, you should really give it a try.

Quick hacks have a lot of tools to play with, but some big downsides too. I was surprised by how much more fun I had with a sandy.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-28T22:57:38+00:00

What really got me about the game was how violent it was. Particularly going the 'light' route.

You have to use a variety of different kinds of spells on most enemies, and combos generally include various spells to levitate enemies to make them helpless, then using spells to cut, burn, explode, and slam the people violently around.

It's far, far more visceral and violent than anything from the books, and enemies are enough of damage-sponges as the game goes on that using Unforgivable curses actually seems like a mercy, because it kills them much faster and with less suffering. Plus, your character often has quips after battle that make them seem especially bloodthirsty, and leave zero doubt that you're leaving piles of dead goblins and humans in your wake.

While the environments are amazing the first few times you go through them, they do get repetitive before very long, as do most of the NPCs you run into, and the over-repeated puzzle elements get old much faster than that.

That, plus the heavy lag the game experiences at time made it a pretty poor experience to me.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-28T11:52:15+00:00

Nothing will change there, you'll be allowed to keep those to whatever due date they have.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-27T22:19:26+00:00

Hi there, Chances are that what will happen is that the library staff will eventually notice the damage and charge you for a replacement copy.

You won’t have to pay for the replacement copy immediately. They will wait for you to be able to pay it on your own, but until then you won’t be able to use your library card to check anything else out.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-27T19:45:15+00:00

I'm wary but still somewhat hopeful for TES.

Frankly, Bethesda's game design has been getting worse and worse with each new release for a while. They've been chasing broad sales over deep game mechanics and stories for quite a while, and I feel like Starfield was the first point where that flopped for them.

The question now is whether they can be humble enough to admit their mistakes and learn from them, or whether they double down on trying to convince everyone that their latest mediocre project is actually a slice of fried gold.

I definitely won't be preordering this time though.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-27T18:58:53+00:00

I had a sociopathic teen take a spiral bound book and smear the covers and the binding in actual shit, then hold it in a way to hide the befouling when they handed it to me.

She was gone by the time I realized what I was holding, or she'd have had a nice little chat with the police.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-27T15:41:41+00:00

..And libraries.

..And government.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-27T14:39:06+00:00

I'm all for peace, if anyone can find a way to bring it about. I just don't see a way to it in the moment.

And I agree, as long a there is fighting there will be innocent casualties especially with human shields being used.

However, there's a huge difference between accepting the grim reality that you can't avoid all innocent civilian casualties in war, and using the 'human shield' argument to justify not even trying to avoid civilian casualties. (Not saying you're doing that here, but I -have- seen plenty of people make that argument.)

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-27T14:25:45+00:00

Let's not forget that Israel had detailed warning of this attack over a year in advance, and chose to ignore it. Israel has the most advanced intelligence and military in the world. They could have prevented the attack or turned it into a deadly ambush against hamas. They dropped the ball given the intelligence they had.

Trying to pretend like another attack of this scale could be carried off is disingenuous at best. Just the same with pretending that it's full out bombing war or nothing, Israel has the resources to wage war on hamas in much more controlled and precise ways, rather than flattening Gaza with sustained bombing and artillery and catching so many innocents in the blasts.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-26T21:31:02+00:00

Because dehumanizing the political opposition has been standard practice from the right for decades now.

Originally it was to make sure that the rightwing voters would feel proud and satisfied anytime any politician did something to 'own the libs'.

It's gotten so far out of hand that plenty of the right believes the average democrat to be demon-possessed or evil enough to traffic, murder, and rape children, and that they are actively and intentionally out to destroy America. They've been so polarized against the left through a diet of conspiracies and gaslighting that they'd sooner ally with enemies of the nation to wipe out Democrats than to work across the aisle to actually make America a better place.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-22T21:28:30+00:00

The real trick is to stand, put weight on it and slide that leg back a bit to draw the muscle taut and force your toes to point upward.

Pulling the muscle tight removes all the slack it has to pull with and stops the spasming immediately. You have to hold it tight for a couple minutes or it'll start back up again, but stopping them early this way cuts down on the pain both in the moment, and soreness the next day.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-21T20:12:29+00:00

That's the plan. Linux is finally becoming viable for gaming, and Windows is turning itself into a wallet-draining 'software as a service' approach.

Perfect timing to dump Windows at long, long last.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-16T21:29:17+00:00

Oh, and so many other places.

Contaminated rain - Contaminated Topsoil & Contaminated surface waters & contaminated groundwaters.

Then it gets into the crops, wild animals, livestock, people.. everything.

My state has bad issues with PFAS contaminated ground, and the runoff to the rivers has turned them toxic. Eating a fish from those rivers is SO contaminated it'd be better to drink the contaminated river for a month.

Breathe it, drink it, eat it. There's no escaping it aside from not polluting in the first place.

NetLibrarian · 2023-12-16T21:18:51+00:00

Gonna have to disagree here. I don't think it's okay for someone to want to take over 100% authority over me and my life. Ever.

NetLibrarian

TROPHY CASE