DevCat

DevCat, 1 month ago

I’ve lived in the US for quite a few decades, but I’m still a German citizen. When asked why I don’t take US citizenship, I give a three-part answer:

1. I don’t believe you can owe allegiance to two different entities at the same time.
2. Between a German EU passport and a US Green Card, I can travel almost anywhere in the world.
3. I f I ever run into legal troubles, first call is to the wife, second goes to the embassy.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Here you go: carbonmajors.org/Entities

DevCat, 1 month ago

Looks like a good reason to reject the bond in its entirety. It’s obviously a bad faith attempt to get around the rules.

DevCat, 1 month ago

I found ChatGPT to be indispensable in dealing with a nonsense homework assignment. I had to write a paper on a subject I knew about, but had to write it from a specific viewpoint and in far less time than would normally be allowed. I wrote up an outline, checked my sources, etc. Told ChatGPT to flesh it out. Read through the output, made some adjustments, and reprocessed. When I was happy with the result, I had it write a closing paragraph. Once again, read through the output, made adjustments, and reprocessed. Same with the opening paragraph.

Lastly, to remove all traces of AI, ran it all through QuillBot and had the input made more academic in some places, more casual in others.

Lesson: know your subject before attempting this. ChatGPT can be a time saver, but only if you already understand the output. Think of it as you would an advanced spelling and grammar checker. It’s just another tool/ After all, if your boss told you to write something, and you could do it in a quarter of the expected time and still produce acceptable output, would they be upset?

DevCat, 1 month ago

That’s just it. You have to understand the output; otherwise you get very authoritative looking garbage.

I wrote some rudimentary Python code to do a job by brute force. On a whim, I asked ChatGPT to optimize the code. It did a pretty good job, but I still had to tweak it for my purpose.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Can we please help him realize this? Start with locking him up for 27 years.

DevCat, 1 month ago

The press has learned that “engagement” is the only way for them to survive. The problem is that they are generating a false narrative to attract more viewers. Basically, it’s become clickbait. They refuse to show all the information because then voters would see it and stop viewing them daily.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Revolutions start with “only this kind of people are allowed.” Then they start refining what they mean by “this kind”. Eventually, only a few people are in charge.

DevCat, 1 month ago

haaretz.com/…/0000017f-db53-d3ff-a7ff-fbf3bcc5000…

Until World War II, the vast majority of Eastern and Western Jews – traditionalist, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Communists and Bundists – were avowed anti-Zionists. They did not wish for sovereignty over themselves within a nation-state framework in the Middle East. The Bundists did in fact see themselves, and quite rightly, as a Yiddish people in need of cultural-linguistic autonomy, but they rejected outright the proposal to immigrate to Palestine as part of a project of a trans-world Jewish nation.

And here we come to the last desperate attempt to justify the Zionist enterprise retroactively: Zionism as a response to an emergency situation. History, unfortunately, was more tragic. Zionism failed utterly to rescue Europe’s Jews, nor could it have done so. From 1882 until 1924, the Jews streamed in their masses – about 2.5 million – to the North American continent of promise. And yes, had it not been for the racist Johnson-Reed Immigration Act that prevented continued immigration, another million or perhaps two million of these souls might have been saved.

Even the Jews did not want Israel, they only took it as a last resort because European and North American countries didn’t want any more.

Chaim Gans isn’t comfortable with this historical narrative, especially when the oppression of the natives and the plundering of their land is continuing even now. Zionism, which succeeded in forging a new nation, is not prepared to recognize its political-cultural-linguistic creation, nor even the specific national rights which that process conferred on it. But Gans, ultimately, is right. From Meir Kahane to Meretz, all Zionists continue to view the state we live in not as a democratic republic belonging to all its Israeli citizens – who definitely have a right to self-determination – but as a political entity that belongs to the Jews of the world, who like their forebears have no wish to come here or to define themselves as Israelis.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Marine cope cage?

DevCat, 1 month ago

The problem with desalination plants is the same as with nuclear power plants - what to do with all the waste.

wired.com/…/desalination-is-booming-but-what-abou…

DevCat, 1 month ago

Both the RO and thermal methods are energy intensive, thus adding to climate change, thus adding to water scarcity,

DevCat, 1 month ago

Dumping into different spots to spread it out could be a solution. It would add expense to the process, though, and we know how capitalism handles that. As for aquifer charging, the brine is thicker than what was taken out. This adds to the problem in that you’ll need much higher pressure to drive it, or you’ll clog the system at the output point.

If you’re going to go the route of least expensive solution, find an area that is unattractive to human life, preferably a desert near the ocean. Pipe in the seawater, using RO to remove as much fresh water as possible. Then take the brine and send it out to evaporation beds covering a large area. You can recover some more water through that process, but, most importantly, removing the water and leaving the salts and minerals requires little energy input this way. The downside is the acreage required.

If you had a geothermal vent to provide heat, it would make the entire process almost carbon-neutral.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Vote to get ranked voting in place. Seems to be the best way to get your voice heard.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Unlike the precision guided munitions, the new F-15s would need to be built from scratch. A US official said there are no plans to expedite delivery of the jets to Israel so, if approved, they would not be delivered to Israel for at least five years.

Is that enough time to vote in some Dems who will stop it?

DevCat, 1 month ago

This marks the first time the bird flu has been found in dairy cattle, the American Veterinary Medical Association said, and the findings came just days after the virus was detected in goats on a Minnesota farm. In the fall, the bird flu also hit the polar bear species for the first time, killing one of the bears, and it has also spread to marine animals, killing tens of thousands of seals and sea lions.

Bird flu was suspected of impacting U.S. cattle after dairy cows were found to be experiencing “decreased lactation, low appetite and other symptoms,” agencies said in a joint news release. On March 25, they said milk samples showed two farms in Kansas and one in Texas were impacted. A swab from another dairy farm in Texas also yielded a positive result, they said.

Bird flu was later found in a Michigan herd that had recently received cows from Texas, and “presumptive positive test results have also been received for additional herds in New Mexico, Idaho and Texas,” officials said.

…

While impacted cattle are experiencing a decline in how much milk they produce, the government said that so far, the milk loss “is too limited to have a major impact on supply.”

“There should be no impact on the price of milk or other dairy products,” the agencies said. “Further, the U.S. typically has a more than sufficient milk supply in the spring months due to seasonally higher production.”

There is also no concern from the agencies that milk in the commercial supply is unsafe. All milk products must be pasteurized and only milk from healthy animals is allowed to be sent to processing for human consumption, they added.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Attempting to disrupt trade between our two democratic states

Since when was Israel democratic? Bibi and Likud have certainly made every effort to turn it into a theocratic totalitarian state.

DevCat, 1 month ago

Lack of decent bread in the US. Coupled with some good cheese.

DevCat, 1 month ago

North America was a beautiful place. Then the white man showed up. Been downhill ever since. So, yeah, immigration is a problem. Care to fix it?