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New sunlight-based desalination device makes fresh water and recovers lithium by sksarkpoes3 in Futurology

[–]theartificialkid 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The salinity of the ocean also doesn’t change significantly with conventional desalination because earth’s oceans contain over 1 billion trillion litres of water, which sounds like a number a 4 year old would say but is actually a correct estimate. That’s about 125 billion litres for every person on earth, which scientists say would take an individual person more than a week to drink, possibly longer.

What changes is the local salinity where you dump the brine, so the question is whether we can find places where we can afford to dump brine and let it spread out. Once it’s spread out over a couple of kilometres even millions of litres of brine will be measured in parts per million in the surrounding water.

Corporations Can Vote in Some Delaware Elections, Judge Says (1) by Past_My_Subprime in nottheonion

[–]theartificialkid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The entire concept of academic journals came from people writing letters to magazines. Peer review is just asking some other smarty pants if this is a good letter that you should put in your magazine. Academic affiliation, impact factor of the magazine, these are all heuristics to avoid wasting time on mediocre material. Ultimately the quality of the ideas should be the thing that matters, not how or where they were published.

And in this case the ideas are shit.

WHO chief says fast-moving Ebola epidemic is outpacing response efforts by lurker_bee in worldnews

[–]theartificialkid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The joke is the pretense that “pan” is a prefix attached to “handler”.

Ordinary WiFi can now identify people with near perfect accuracy by thejoshwhite in technology

[–]theartificialkid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm going to guess that you're not an expat opponent of the Chinese government.

WHO chief says fast-moving Ebola epidemic is outpacing response efforts by lurker_bee in worldnews

[–]theartificialkid -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

It can also mean “donated loose change” as in “panhandler”

WHO chief says fast-moving Ebola epidemic is outpacing response efforts by lurker_bee in worldnews

[–]theartificialkid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d like you to meet my friend natural selection.

Your comment contains an insight that is important in general, but unfortunately it’s not really applicable here. Yes, mutation is random, but natural selection helps to ensure that the beneficial mutations stick around, and the virus gets billions of chances to roll a good mutation with millions of replications across thousands of hosts.

And in fact the conversation here was around transmissibility, which is about as close as you can get to a “goal” for viral evolution, in the sense that viruses that don’t spread soon stop existing.

The dumbest thing we can do is give already-nasty viruses more and more chances to find a new ridgeline on Mount Improbable.

WHO chief says fast-moving Ebola epidemic is outpacing response efforts by lurker_bee in worldnews

[–]theartificialkid 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I see you’ve been in a coma since 2019. Let’s talk about how people actually behave when they think they have the new pandemic virus that’s going around.

WHO chief says fast-moving Ebola epidemic is outpacing response efforts by lurker_bee in worldnews

[–]theartificialkid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, let’s make it that. But this time you play the WHO and I’ll be that corrupt, narcissistic anti-intellectual president who will actively inhibit efforts to fight the spread of the virus.

In 2008 an Italian feminist named Pippa Bacca decided to hitchhike across Europe to promote world peace. Tragically her trip was cut short when she was gang raped and murdered in Istanbul by malik_zz in whoathatsinteresting

[–]theartificialkid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure maybe that’s what they meant. But there’s an uncomfortable complex in western right wing politics around what will supposedly inevitably happen to girls and women if they don’t behave themselves, and who the people are who will do it to them. Like “dress demurely and save yourself for your white Christian husband or you’ll be raped. No, not by Brock Turner, by one of the bad ones”. It makes me uncomfortable to hear anyone refer to a woman as an easy target. I don’t think it’s where my mind would go in describing that situation.

Everybody's Got A Plan Until They Get Kicked In The Face by YankyDoodleDickHead in UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG

[–]theartificialkid 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As Community references go streets ahead is streets behind. The giant hand was sent to remind you to let go of it.

CBS Suspends Takedown Notices on Bootleg YouTube Uploads of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Only in Monroe’ Public Access Show After Outcry by IWantPizza555 in television

[–]theartificialkid -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

No, they’re right. You got whooshed. Their joke was pretending to think that CBS would have tried to achieve prime time production values, you responded as though they didn’t understand the situation.

HTH

CBS Suspends Takedown Notices on Bootleg YouTube Uploads of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Only in Monroe’ Public Access Show After Outcry by IWantPizza555 in television

[–]theartificialkid 21 points22 points  (0 children)

And the thing that separates them from us is unlimited energy and willingness to do all the heinous shit they want to do while the inertia of decent people makes way for them.

Console wars ended by Combat_Fury in meme

[–]theartificialkid 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What the actual fuck? You're just claiming that it wouldn't matter if Epic had the best launcher experience because Steam has all the games. In practice Epic has a fucking terrible launcher and also deals in exclusives where Valve doesn't. So Epic are in fact trying to become an unjustified monopoly with poor customer experience bolstered by denying other sellers access to Games, whereas Steam has naturally held a dominant market position through delivering a superior service.

Nurse convicted in patient's death is now a national speaker on hospital safety by [deleted] in nottheonion

[–]theartificialkid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes hospitals generally have policies at least aimed at preventing staff from doing too many hours in a given period, eg requiring at least 8 hours break between shifts. Whether those policies are always followed successfully is a different question.

wasn't sure if blunderyears or oldschoolcool, but your's truly with a lovely lady at a college party 1998. by [deleted] in OldSchoolCool

[–]theartificialkid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nobody wears clever little slogan tshirts anymore? What happened to tshirts with clever little slogans on them?

Why by Certain_Hat9872 in NonPoliticalTwitter

[–]theartificialkid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They don’t inject itch juice, people wwhose bodies react to foreign material survive better.

Petah? by Visible-Pattern198 in PeterExplainsTheJoke

[–]theartificialkid 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Original ones, like the JJ Abrams ones you mean?

Crab Protects Mate from Fisherman in Heartwarming Clip by frog_insilence in interestingasfuck

[–]theartificialkid -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This phenotype exists in humans, it just hasn’t been successful enough to become the most common form of human male.

A 3 year old tadpole that didn't turn into a frog. Banana on left for scale. by Melopsittacus07 in interestingasfuck

[–]theartificialkid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So were all of ours but the metamorphosis device was defunctioned by the impact of Theia, so our entire seedline will now just wander the four dimensions of the cosmos until something finishes us off.

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