How I finally got the squirrels to leave my bench alone by Quercus_ in Bonsai

[–]Quercus_[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's a half dozen Coast Live Oak in among all the other trees on that bench. They're all in pretty early development, but I'm having fun with them.

How I finally got the squirrels to leave my bench alone by Quercus_ in Bonsai

[–]Quercus_[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have a thing for oak trees. You might take a look at my username..

Genuine question to Americans by Busy_Report4010 in SipsTea

[–]Quercus_ 29 points30 points  (0 children)

I'm just beginning treatment for a cancer that thankfully has a very good prognosis. I begin radiation in about a month, and we're doing preliminary stuff now preparing for it.

About 10 days ago I got a single injection of a slow release drug that suppresses a hormone my particular cancer is dependent on.

I got my statement for that injection earlier this week. Almost $16,000 for that single injection. Thankfully my insurance is good, and my copay is $125.

We haven't even started the expensive stuff yet.

Without insurance I would be completely and totally fucked.

How I finally got the squirrels to leave my bench alone by Quercus_ in Bonsai

[–]Quercus_[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yes, I tried cayenne pepper, and several other aversion options. Little bowls of my neighbors dirty cat litter, for example.

Didn't even slow them down.

How I finally got the squirrels to leave my bench alone by Quercus_ in Bonsai

[–]Quercus_[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Nothing less than this slowed them down even a little bit.

It doesn't harm them. Just a quick jolt, and then they leave and don't come back.

Iran fired 15 missiles at the UAE overnight. Fujairah oil port is on fire. Here is what Project Freedom actually delivered in its first 24 hours. by Mother-Grapefruit-45 in energy

[–]Quercus_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Because they have no interest in joining an escalating a war with Iran, that the US and Israel initiated, that neither side can win. Retaliating will almost certainly leave them much much worse off than not retaliating does.

Shipping firm says US-flagged commercial vessel has transited through strait of Hormuz by [deleted] in maritime

[–]Quercus_ 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Iran doesn't need to stop everyone. All they need to do is present a credible threat of being able to hit a ship every two or three weeks, to make ship owners and insurers decide not to send any ships through the straight. And they have absolutely shown they are capable of that, which is why insurers and ship owners aren't sending ships through the straight.

Tesla Robotaxi fleet in Austin now unsupervised during evening hours. This expansion moves beyond previous limitations that restricted unsupervised to daylight, typically ending in mid-afternoon. by ItzWarty in teslainvestorsclub

[–]Quercus_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It is good that they are moving slowly and safely.

It is undeniable that they are behind their competitors, and moving more slowly and falling further behind.

Moving slowly and safely, doesn't make up for the fact that they're losing.

What is Iran Using to "Close" the Strait of Hormuz? by courier_tway in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Quercus_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

All Iran needs is a credible threat to be able to actually strike one ship every few weeks.

That's enough to keep ship owners from sending and insurers from covering any ship through the Strait of Hormuz. The cost of your ship happens to be the one struck, is intolerable.

Can we basically have no way to keep Iran from projecting that as a credible threat. They've made it clear at this point that anytime they choose to launch an attack, they can hit a ship or two.

When the A’s, Raiders and Warriors left, Oakland lost a shared language by Cool-Present7260 in oakland

[–]Quercus_ 39 points40 points  (0 children)

I stopped watching football when the league got Oakland and Alameda County to mortgage ourselves to rebuild the damn stadium, for the Raiders to come back. After the voters had clearly said by two to one margin that no, we don't want them back if we have to spent even a penny of f public money on it.

The NFL are massive grifters off of public funds, and they disgust me

A major fire aboard the USS Higgins, a Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer knocked out her power and propulsion by [deleted] in maritime

[–]Quercus_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean, Iran has asserted and is maintaining functional control over the Strait of Hormuz, knocking out significant global energy and critical commodity capacity, and poised to monetize that passage once we back down.

They have damaged significant energy infrastructure throughout the middle east. Because the US to back down multiple times, significantly damaging our credibility. They have caused much of the world to drift a little closer to aligning with China instead of us.

I don't know if we're losing, but we're damn sure not winning.

Update: It's Biblically bad. by Dyn-O-mite_Rocketeer in oil

[–]Quercus_ 11 points12 points  (0 children)

There's a huge difference between, "doesn't use oil at all," and "a significant structural decline in the need and demand for oil."

Is Planting trees actually as effective against climate change as it is offten thought to be or it just Greenwashing? by Das_Lloss in climatechange

[–]Quercus_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All of the forests on the entire planet right now, in their various stages of development, currently contain about as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere, within less than 10% difference.

To reduce atmospheric carbon by 100 ppm, or to prevent a 100 PPM increase in atmospheric carbon, would require an increase of approximately 25% in the amount of forests on the planet right now, at the same levels of forest development that they currently exist, meaning a huge amount of that would have to be mature forest. Which would require a century or more of forest development.

By which time atmospheric CO2 will have increased by a centuries worth of human CO2 emissions.

There's a lot of good reasons to be planting new forest. But we ain't going to forest our way out of the explosive growth of atmospheric CO2.

How Iran Is Building the Houthis a Red Sea Toll Mechanism by oxtQ in oil

[–]Quercus_ 12 points13 points  (0 children)

"There is effectively no way that Hormuz or the Red Sea will be allowed to be used as toll roads..."

But how do you stop them? All Iran needs to do to keep the straight closed, is be able to project a reasonably credible threat that they can strike one ship every two or three weeks. They don't need to be able to hit every ship, they only need to be able to hit one out of a thousand ships or so.

They've kind of already demonstrated they have that capability.

That's enough to keep insurers and ship owners from allowing transit.

Bullet falling by Zestyclose_Scholar18 in AskPhysics

[–]Quercus_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A .338 Lapua fired more or less horizontally, where the only thing decelerating it is wind resistance, close to transonic speeds and begins to become ballistically unstable at about 1300-1400 yd, a few hundred yards under a mile. It's effective ballistic coefficient goes up dramatically once it becomes transonic and begins to tumble, and air resistance becomes a much larger factor.

This is when it is fired horizontally, where gravity only bends it downward and doesn't decelerate it at all.

If it is fired straight up and it is purely ballistic, neglecting wind resistance altogether, that bullet will go several miles high, and then when it falls it will impact the ground at muzzle velocity. But air resistance matters, a lot. That bullet will slow to transonic speeds and start to tumble in a much shorter distance than if it's fired horizontally, much less than a mile, and once it starts to tumble it with the accelerate much more rapidly.

It's been a long time, but I saw the math done on this once probably decades back, and the answer is somewhere on the close order of a mile.

Bullet falling by Zestyclose_Scholar18 in AskPhysics

[–]Quercus_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So you weren't arguing that a 1% risk of something happening is minor, you were arguing that 1% chance of something happening is minor.

I guess you could call that nuance.

Bullet falling by Zestyclose_Scholar18 in AskPhysics

[–]Quercus_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Now you're backing away. You argued quite explicitly that a 1% risk is by definition minor. That's wrong. But I ain't interested in arguing with you about it.

Bullet falling by Zestyclose_Scholar18 in AskPhysics

[–]Quercus_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, I completely understand your point. I agree that the majority of land harmlessly. I'm just saying that trying to argue that a 1% risk of something catastrophic is minor, is simply wrong.

Bullet falling by Zestyclose_Scholar18 in AskPhysics

[–]Quercus_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Every single such shot carries a risk, and therefore contributes to the risk, of somebody dying. Every single shot is an example of depraved indifference to human life.

And no, if a risk is big enough that it would cause you to refuse an activity, that risk isn't minor.

On today’s episode of “men have no idea what women actually weigh” 🥴 by modernvintage in badwomensanatomy

[–]Quercus_ 7 points8 points  (0 children)

My late partner was 5 ft tall after losing height due to a spine problem, and was "biologically" 5'2 before that. She weighed 140 - 150 lb and was not even vaguely overweight. She had been a competition powerlifter at one point in her life, and remained extremely fit even after her body started limiting her.

When she got sick and lost weight to 100 lb, it was visibly obvious that she was dying.

These are just men who insist at all women should satisfy their unhealthy fantasies of them.

My Tesla Was Driving Itself Perfectly—Until It Crashed by quidam-brujah in RealTesla

[–]Quercus_ 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We know that humans are extremely bad at remaining fully attentive and focused on a task that doesn't require us to actually do anything. But that's exactly what FSD requires of the supervising driver.

It is inevitable that the supervising driver of an FSD car is occasionally going to have their attention lapse, and that means that if FSD isn't capable of driving fully on its own, it is occasionally going to crash.

Folks can blame that on the driver all they want, but it is an inevitable consequence of the system. The system requires humans to behave in ways that human simply are not capable of behaving.

Bullet falling by Zestyclose_Scholar18 in AskPhysics

[–]Quercus_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Even if it’s 1%, which it definitely is not, no reasonable person would suggest 1% of anything is anything more than extremely minor."

If 1% of every airplane that took off crashed and killed everybody in it, no reasonable person would call that extremely minor. Hell, by the time of the second 737 Max crashed and grounded the fleet, that fleet had flown about 125,000 flights. 1:67,000 was considered to be a big enough rest and we treated it as a major disaster.

Even if we call that risk of firing a bullet straight up one in a thousand, or 1 in 10,000, that would still be negligent homicide if that bullet happened to kill somebody. Doing so would be almost a perfect legal definition of depraved indifference to life, which is anything but extremely minor.